Training Kakashi
by Rieka De-Volka
Summary: Over the time skip, Kakashi gained more than just the Mangekyo Sharingan. KakashiIruka with a side order of quirky humor.
1. Lesson One: Safety

**Training Kakashi.**

_Lesson One: Safety._

Iruka set the marker down and stretched, cracking his back as the kink in his neck protested loudly. He felt rather despondent to the prospect of finishing grading the tower of written exams he had handed in earlier in the day – wryly and somewhat fondly, he thought of Naruto's vehement repulsion to those – and wondered again why he had decided a six page questionnaire would make a good punishment for his unruly students; _he_ was the one that had to grade them, after all. It always involved inhuman efforts to translate long strings of ink that vaguely resembled actual characters and a fine work of cryptography to decode the abysmal grammar some of his students nursed. Really, in the end, he was punishing himself as much as he was punishing them. 

He glared at the unrelenting stack of scrolls, hoping for a moment that it would disappear under his scrutiny, but merely sighed when they, predictably, remained as impassive and inanimate as scrolls of paper are prone to be. 

The teacher sighed, taping his cheek with his index finger as he debated going to bed and leave the exams to be graded the next day or continue until he was done. He could, of course, leave the exams unmarked for a few days and have the anxiety levels raise in the class, but that would also mean jumpier students and Iruka really didn't like jumpier students; they made everything more difficult. On the other hand, he _was_ tired, and the prospect of a good night of sleep was tempting. Very tempting. 

A shadow flickered outside his window, beyond the usual movement of the tree by the window, and Iruka twisted smoothly on his seat, kunai held tightly and aiming instinctively at the throat. The flash of silver hair was enough to stop the attack, however, and the tip of the weapon found itself resting almost teasingly against Kakashi's skin. The Jounin's visible eye closed in what Iruka could vaguely recognize as a smile. 

"Hi, Iruka-sensei." 

When the taller man fell on him, unconscious, Iruka had about point three seconds of blind panic before he blinked and managed to set the unresisting body upright. Kakashi was out cold. Iruka blinked again, but the image did not dispel itself and panic was displaced by worry and faint annoyance. 

It turned mostly into embarrassment, when it took him five minutes to actually gather enough wits to call Midori for help. 

The stack of exams remained ignored in his desk, staring accusingly at, well, nothing, because generally, paper does not stare at anything, and even if it had been staring, Iruka was too busy trying to figure out what was going on to pay attention to it. 

-- 

Kobayashi Midori, Chuunin and highly skilled medic Nin, studied the man lying awkwardly on Iruka's bed with a mix of amusement and disbelief. Kakashi's body showed clear signs of abuse, mostly byproducts of intense training, but for him to simply drop into unconsciousness… she rubbed the bridge of her nose and tried hard to keep the headache at bay. The fact Iruka was _hovering_ was not helping. Frankly, all she wanted was to slip quietly back to her own apartment and finish her tea. _Stupid oath of self-sacrifice_, she thought sourly just as Kakashi moaned, slowly coming back to the land of the living. _Stupid Jounins that don't know when to stop pushing._

Personally, and away from judging ears, Midori would willingly admit she preferred unconscious patients to awake, alert ones – it was mostly why she worked so well under Ibiki-sama's, the patients there were always either in too much agony to complain or too scared to interrupt, and they always made her work easier. Faster. 

Iruka leaned over her shoulder, peeking at the groaning Copy Nin worriedly. It was sort of sweet, she figured rather gloomily, only not. 

"Do you know where you are, Kakashi-sensei?" Midori asked politely, folding her hands at her lap and watching attentively every minute movement, reading them expertly as a sign of weakness or distress. Kakashi's visible eyelid lifted minutely, before it slid back close – Midori clenched her teeth while entertaining rather uncharitable thoughts about Iruka, when the Chuunin teacher's knuckles turned white. Kakashi gurgled something or another unintelligible, but the intention was clear enough. "Alright, can you move?" 

Again, the eye opened and gave Midori a mildly sheepish expression – it was amazing the ability Kakashi had to communicate non-verbally with others, considering his whole facial expression consisted of an _eye_ – and with visible effort wiggled his toes. And that was pretty much it. Iruka made a small sound in the back of his throat, something between surprise and anguish, and Midori decided that if she never heard it ever again, she would be quite a happy woman. 

"…right." 

"Is it that bad, Midori-san?" She wanted to smack him, she really wanted to, but medic Nins weren't supposed to, so she contented herself with a very put upon sigh. 

"Somewhat," she poked Kakashi's unresponsive side, "I'm kinda surprised he managed to get here in one piece, _someone_ must've spent too much time doing extra training, burning out all his chakra like that. At least you were smart enough to go somewhere you wouldn't be left to die," Kakashi shrugged – or at least, he gave the impression he shrugged, though he remained unmoving – and Iruka made a disapproving noise in the back of his throat, "you're lucky Iruka-sensei is such a caring man, Kakashi-sensei, otherwise you would be dead. As it is," Midori grinned, "you'll recover just fine, though it will be painful." 

When she winked, Iruka got a fairly good idea why she worked under Ibiki: the expression was positively sadistic. Kakashi groaned again, torn between exhaustion, pain and the vague sensation he was about to experience something that definitely fell into the 'not nice' category. He also mourned for his Come Come Paradise novel, abandoned in the middle of nowhere – his favorite training ground. 

"Midori, wha-" 

The healing Nin began to perform a series of complicated seals which caught both Jounin and Chuunin's attention. 

"This is a jutsu that's been passed down my family for generations; a way to ensure the patient feels no pain while the treatment takes place and which numbs their reaction to the worst part of it;" Midori smiled as she thrust her hands forward, "this is the Ultimate Anesthetic no Jutsu!" 

…and since Kakashi and Iruka were too busy being intrigued by her hand movements and the steady release of Chakra, they only noticed Midori's clone when she sneaked behind him and banged Kakashi's head with a thick medicine scroll. Both Midoris cheered a little when he went limp and unconscious. 

Iruka stared and stared and stared, and after the longest moment, stared some more. 

"_Are you out of your **mind**?!_" 

"Hey!" The woman seemed fairly miffed – as if it had been _her_ who had been knocked out; "It works, okay? He's unconscious now and he won't feel it when I do _this_," her index finger sank between Kakashi's ribs, unlocking a cramped chakra flow, "or _this_," the next point was pressed with the same accuracy and it didn't seem any less painful. Iruka wondered if she was pressing harder than strictly necessary, simply because she was childish like that. "In any way, once his chakra finds its flow again, it'll take him six, maybe seven days to recover completely, but try not to move him much. And he'll need something for the headache, as well." 

"But, but—" Iruka fumbled with his words in a pathetic display that almost, _almost_ moved her. "He can't stay here! I can't look after him and he needs… and my classes… and my _students_…" 

"And his porn collection," Midori added somewhat teasingly, though the effect in Iruka was highly amusing: he turned a shade of red she had previously thought impossible to reach naturally. Her expression shifted into something less cheerful and more melancholic as she smiled. "We all need a friend once in a while, Iruka-sensei; it'd do you good, both of you. Ta ta." With a little wave, she left in a puff, leaving Iruka without the chance to reply. 

The Chuunin looked at the unconscious Kakashi, who had, at some point during the exchange, slipped into a relatively peaceful, sound sleep. 

It seemed those exams would get graded after all. 

-- 

"You know, Iruka-sensei, you don't really need to sleep there." 

Kakashi watched with morbid amusement as Iruka struggled to curl under a too small blanket, pressing himself tight against the corner. It was a fairly hilarious sight, but by the dark, peevish glare he was being subjected to, Kakashi was fairly certain his life expectancy would drop dramatically if he laughed. 

Underneath the fabric of his mask, he bit his lip and hid a smile. 

"I'm fine," Iruka snapped back with far more venom than even his most unruly students ever heard him utter: he was tired, he was cranky, he was _nervous_ and he wanted his bed. 

Except his bed was currently occupied by one Copy Nin who made a point of suggesting things that had Iruka's cheeks _blazing_, and that did not help him with any of his current ailments. The only small mercy was the fact he didn't have class the next morning, and he could, probably, sleep in a little. If he managed to sleep at all in the first place, of course. Admittedly, in his moments of weakness, he had pictured the silver haired Jounin laying right where he was, but this wasn't one of such moments and the reality of his presence in Iruka's apartment – in his _bed_ – was methodically ripping his nerves raw. He didn't want to do something stupid that would make Kakashi uncomfortable or worse, angry; but at the same time, he was getting anxious about revealing too much or being caught or, or… 

Kakashi wasn't fazed by the mix of emotions that had Iruka performing a strange cross of sulking and glaring. He thought it was cute. 

"I could move over and you could squeeze here…" The glare intensified and outdid the sulking, so the silver haired Jounin concluded, correctly, that finishing that thought would not be wise. 

"Midori-san said you shouldn't move," Kakashi wondered if Iruka was not above stabbing his pillow with a kunai, though with all that rough handling, it might not even be necessary, "so you're _not_ moving," the thin fabric got stretched and pulled in a parody of what a mother would do for a child, before Iruka settled back with a huff. "Good night." 

Kakashi strained his neck – and dear heavens, it _hurt_ – for a moment longer, taking in the stiff posture and the hunched shoulders, before he sighed. There was a childish, sardonic jab almost dying to get through his lips – it's _morning_, actually – but by the time he had settled for a simple, honest 'good night', Iruka was snoring softly, head balancing precariously in his sleep. Kakashi couldn't move, his body so sore and his chakra so frail he felt a little breeze would do him in; he couldn't go wrap that blanket properly around the thin shoulders and he couldn't pull Iruka close, explain things. There were many things he couldn't do at the moment, many he had never been able to do before and many he would never really dare to do. So he laid there, ignoring the dull ache of his straining muscles and the burning of the sharingan behind his eyelid, thinking about a thousand things that weren't, wouldn't and hadn't been done and watching the younger man sleep in a way his own active mind wouldn't let him. 

He wondered if he should tell Iruka he hadn't had a real destination in mind when he gathered that last burst of chakra, only the hope it would be somewhere safe. He wondered if Iruka would believe him. 

Kakashi hoped so, because this truly was the safest place he could think of. 


	2. Lesson Two: Timing

**Training Kakashi.**

_Lesson Two: Timing._

When Midori moved into the small apartment building, she had been slightly intimidated when she realized she was the only female in the entire complex. It wasn't so much that she was _scared_ – she _had_ gotten a job working as Ibiki-sama's head medic Nin after all, and she _was_ a proud and capable Chuunin – but that she felt slightly put off by the sheer amount of testosterone that floated in the air and more than a little lonely at the prospect of not having any real friends in there.

Of course, about five minutes into her depressed, pathetic, post-moving-in mental rant, there had been a knock in her door and she'd met Umino Iruka for the first time. The scarred shinobi gave her a warm welcome to the building, introduced himself and asked if he could be of any assistance. He was the nice sort of guy who cared about basically everyone he came in contact with and the friendship between them had started off almost immediately. It wasn't what she had been expecting – discussion of vain issues and more feminine inclined topics, such as the fact the guy that lived in the first floor was positively _hot_ – but Iruka had the sort of charm that made you withstand long discussions about the most trivial of things and still enjoy it.

Of the people in her life, Midori considered the man living in the floor above hers to be one of the best things that had ever happened to her, which was why she felt torn at the recent turn of events. What Kakashi had done, appearing into Iruka's in a burst of chakra, was a desperate measure that most Jounins had in them almost instinctively. It was the ultimate expression of fight or flight, where the body itself took the decision and simply moved accordingly. That, in and of itself, was not something unheard of, and considering Kakashi's mental and physical state when she examined him, it was fairly natural.

No, what was bothering her was the fact he had landed into _Iruka's_ and not his own apartment. Kakashi was a powerful shinobi, he got employed often and he was by no means poor. He could afford a nicer place than the bachelor nest that Iruka and Midori called home and certainly, someone with his reputation for silence and secrecy had to feel better and safer at home than in strange surroundings.

It was illogical, but he still had done it.

"You're doing it," looking up, surprised, Midori caught Ibiki giving her a scolding look, lips twisted upside down, his tone peevish and faintly annoyed, "_again_."

She blinked rapidly when she realized that indeed, her hands had found themselves to her hair and one of the two front braids was being undone. She blushed lightly and quickly set her hair back in proper place, the strands of reddish brown hair sticking out their bounds almost accusingly. It was a bad habit and it drove her – and her co-workers – up a wall, but for her, the surest sign of distress was her compulsive need to undo and redo the four braids that kept her hair out of the way.

"I'm sorry, it's nothing," shrugging, she unrolled one of the scrolls in front of her and began reading the report.

Ibiki looked down at her for a moment longer; Midori was not the sort to daydream at work, but then decided it was really none of his business. Except…

"I'm sure it can wait until tonight," the scarred man said calmly, with just the barest hint of mockery. At the blank look, he rolled his eyes. "It's Saturday, Midori, night out?"

_Huh?_ Her eyes shifted down to the calendar sitting in a corner of her desk and she mentally kicked herself. Tonight was the weekly night out of all of Ibiki's staff; generally meaning getting drunk beyond words in a bar a few blocks away from the office and sharing stories, gossip and whatnot. _Damnit_. And she'd forgotten. At her left, Takato snickered since her expression gave her away. She glared at him, and just because she knew she could get away with it, glared a bit at Ibiki as well. He seemed unfazed and continued smirking.

"Actually, I have a patient I need to check on," tilting her chin upwards as haughtily as she could, she added, "I might not be able to go."

"_Date_," Takato coughed not so discretely, and then turned to stare at the ceiling when Midori's glare intensified.

"How _old_ are you?" Frankly annoyed by now, Midori's voice hitched impatiently.

"_Ha_, so it _is_ a date…" The blue haired man snickered, leaning back against his chair. He seemed to have forgotten about the imposing presence in the room.

"It's not!"

"Who's it? It's Iruka, isn't it?" Takato looked at her maliciously, noting with ease the way her cheeks flamed and her eyes gathered that intent to kill that was so characteristic of pissed off females.

Ibiki contemplated for a moment letting the argument grow – Takato needed to be put back in place, _again_, and Midori could use the stress reliever – but then decided that cleaning the walls would be terribly bothersome and only set them back in schedule even more.

"_Children_."

The discussion ended abruptly before it could even start properly and both culprits turned to their boss almost sheepishly. Ibiki raised an eyebrow, not yet looking like the intimidating son of a _bitch_ they all knew him to be, but not exactly pleased either. He waved his hands and frowned slightly.

"If you please," he said, "we have information to gather, prisoners to sort out and reports to file in."

"Yes, Ibiki-sama."

"Yes, Ibiki-sama."

Nodding to himself, Ibiki turned on his heel and disappeared through the door. Midori turned back to her own reports, checking out the progress of the injured prisoners and the dozes of medicine they were being given. Hers was not a pleasant job, nor it was something most medic Nins would consider; she often had to choose to not heal some wounds, in hopes to help the interrogation process and her one true goal was to keep the prisoners alive for long enough for them to confess, rather than to heal them back to full health. It wasn't nice and it wasn't entertaining, but it was necessary and someone had to do it.

Besides, it was certainly better than to spend a couple hours trying to psychoanalyze one Copy Nin and figure out what his intentions were. Not that Iruka couldn't take care of himself, of course, but she was his friend and she _worried_ and…

"It really is Iruka, eh?"

An ink container flew across the office, hitting the smartass right in the head and exploding on contact, showering everything in that desk, including said smartass, with ink. Midori signed the authorizations for the treatment of a few of the prisoners as if nothing had happened and ignored the disgruntled Takato as he went to the bathroom with all the wounded dignity of a fallen Roman emperor.

She wondered, absent mindedly, what was going on back at home and whether leaving Iruka and Kakashi alone had been wise or not.

--

Iruka wished Mother Earth would be nice and lovely and swallow him whole.

"Now, now, Iruka-sensei," Kakashi said almost compassionately from the safety of the bed, "I'm sure it's nothing you hadn't seen before."

Iruka shuddered and sunk further underneath his blanket – which, Kakashi noted, was still way too small for his frame. The Copy Nin wondered if it was possible for someone to blush to death, then grinned a bit under his mask; with Iruka, it was hard to say.

"I'm so _sorry_."

Of course, Mother Earth was as vindictive and bitchy as a three year old girl who had been denied dessert, so it refused to open up and put an end to his misery. Iruka could hardly remember a time when he'd been more embarrassed in his entire life – and considering he had been the test subject for Naruto's Sexy no Jutsu, that was saying something. Then again, few things could compare with waking up with a bitter bastard of a kink in his neck, drowsy and not very coherent and then walk in on one of Konoha's strongest shinobis while he tended to Nature's morning call.

"Why," Kakashi continued, "all you need is a nice, steaming cup of coffee and some breakfast."

Iruka's brown eyes peeked at him from the edge of the blanket, narrowed in mild annoyance.

"And this has nothing to do with you being hungry, of course," the Chuunin said dryly, "it's merely a recommendation born out of your concern from my well being."

"Yup."

Iruka glared at him for a moment, considering a reply, but then his mind – traitorous, annoying little thing it was – flashed the image of Kakashi in the bathroom, hands _busy_ and pants down in bright detail.

The teacher scrambled out of the room, face aflame and hoping to god he could reach the safety of his kitchen before the nosebleed broke through.

_Heh_, thought Kakashi, _heh._

--

There was a dog in his living room. More accurately, Iruka realized there was a _pack of dogs_ in his living room. Sixteen very intelligent dog eyes stared at him as he closed the door and followed his movements as he set the groceries he was carrying on the kitchen counter.

His apartment _stank_ of dog and fleas and Iruka made a pointed effort to not twist his nose in any way that would be insulting, because he really didn't fancy being used as a chew toy by a pack of rabid four legged beast from _hell_.

"Hi, Iruka-sensei."

He hadn't seen Kakashi at first, but now that his all too familiar voice danced around the room, Iruka caught a flash of silver underneath a pile of fur and muscles. The largest dog barked in a vaguely disturbing way that set the hairs on the back of Iruka's neck standing and sent a tingling sensation down his spine. The massive animal moved and slowly revealed the prone Kakashi to Iruka's mildly worried eyes. He gave him his trademark, close eyed smile.

"I was cold."

Iruka stared for a moment, feeling completely out of his depth. Part of him wanted to fret to Kakashi for moving out of the bed – but part of him, _his neck_ for instance, was very glad to know he would sleep comfortably – or that he had been _stupid_ enough to use up his precious chakra reserves to summon his ninken – part of him also wanted to ask what the hell did a bunch of Nin dogs had to do with cold. He wondered, in the back of his mind, if Kakashi was coming down with the flu or something equally disastrous.

Curiously enough, the idea of sending Kakashi home with his pet squad of furry bodyguards never occurred to him. Iruka did the only thing someone like him could do: sigh and smile awkwardly.

"Dinner?"

There was a chorus of barks before the dogs pulled out their bowls out of thin air. Kakashi just smiled, unseen, under his mask.

--

Midori muttered crude, impolite things about Takato and the weather and the sky and the stairs and the building itself as she made her way to Iruka's apartment. Having a friend that lived in the same building as you did was a wonderful thing for a shinobi; it meant you didn't have to worry about your home and your stuff when you were sent away in missions, and that you had someone trustworthy to make sure nothing happened to them – or that would clean up after a wild party. It was practical and nice, most of the time.

Fumbling with the keys, she managed to open the door to Iruka's apartment, only to be greeted by a sight that would forever be engraved in her mind.

Iruka was thrown awkwardly over Kakashi, nose buried in his _crotch_ as the silver haired shinobi's visible eye seemed to be about to pop out of its socket. Distantly, Midori noted it was the first time she had seen Kakashi's eye fully open, but the fact became fairly unimportant under the stress and weight of Iruka's _head_ in Kakashi's _lap_. _Iruka_'s. In _Kakashi_'s. One of the dogs barked shrilly, and Midori snapped out of her momentary mind-break as she finally noticed the crowd of furry animals in the room.

"Um," said Kakashi, in a show of great eloquence.

"…um," seconded Iruka, lifting his beat red face at a vertiginous speed, eyes wide as saucers as he caught sight of Midori.

He gurgled a little, choking on the syllables that were supposed to form words and lost his balance, crashing down the floor when he tripped over one of Kakashi's blasted dogs.

"I, eh, you know, should leave you alone," Midori forced out in a squeaky, high pitched voice, "I mean, to sex out." Her face was rivaling Iruka's in color by now, "sort out, _sort out_." Pause. "Bye!"

The door slammed shut as she all but scrambled out of the apartment.

Silence stretched.

And stretched.

And stretched some more.

"Well," Kakashi started with clear amusement in his voice, "that's not something that happens every day."

From his position on the floor, Iruka curled up as tightly as he could and moaned out a very miserable 'kill me now, please'.

Mother Earth didn't seem to like him very much, because a chorus of barks and laughs were the only thing that answered his rather pathetic plea.

--

Reiko's bar was a shabby, shadowy establishment that served all manner of alcohol from midday to dawn and cared very little for who its clients were. This was not the place to chill out hearing music or eat lunch. This was the place where the most ruthless of the most ruthless gathered in Konoha, where talks were held in shadowy corners – of which, Reiko's seemed to have aplenty – and where you got drunk off your rocket without having someone looking. Rieko's also happened to be Ibiki's favorite bar in town, not so much because of the environment, but because they served the darn best cold sake in all Konoha. And because he was the boss and he liked it, Reiko's was filled, religiously every Saturday, with the very best of Ibiki's staff. Even Reiko's uncaring and distracted waitress – Yura – had come to see them as the local patrons and the familiar bunch. They were the surest way to know what day it was, because they always arrived in a big group, lead by Konoha's single most scary man and drank themselves to the point of no return under his watchful eye.

Just as Kakashi had his own notions of what teamwork entitled, Ibiki figured the best way to keep his men (and woman) glued together was to share time and liquor in regular intervals. They had what could possible be the worst job in the entire village, they were trained to hurt people, systematically and methodically. They aimed to break mind, body and spirit in every way they could, and while it was gruesome and bloody most of the time, it was also their duty to their village. Ibiki had known most of these people since they left the academy. He had handpicked them for their skills and their personalities and he considered them the closest thing to family, baring his brother. They were like the wheels and the sprockets on a very deadly, very delicate clockwork, and Ibiki fully intended to keep it that way.

Midori stormed into the bar like a true force of nature, eyes wild and hands shaking as she moved in directly to the most shadowy corner, where her boss and her co-workers always drank together. She took up the seat right next to Ibiki and without a second thought snatched the small sake cup from her boss' fingers, drowning it without tasting it. She paused for a moment, shuddering a breath, then reached out for the bottle and tipped it back without much elegance or care. Silence weighted in the table as Ibiki and Takato, the only ones who had shown up that Saturday, stared at her in wonder.

"Fuck," she said, "_fuck_," she repeated, then let her head slam against the wooden table, "fuck it all!"

"Midori?" Ibiki outranked her and he felt safer when he confronted her about anything, Takato just stared at her, eyes slightly glassed with alcohol.

"Fuck Kakashi," one very disgruntled Chuunin muttered dispassionately, "fucking ungrateful son of a—fuck Iruka too, while we're at it!" Ibiki blinked. "Kakashi and Iruka. Kakashi _and_ Iruka!" Midori reached for the sake bottle once more, "Tis just not fair."

Ibiki stared bemused at his subordinate, as she drank down a good half of the bottle and a fairly bright red rose to her cheeks. Midori could never, _ever_ stomach alcohol properly. She was always trying for the sake of being singled out, but really, she sucked at it. One of the guys had to drag her back to her apartment every Saturday, withstanding the insane giggling fits and the threats upon his person. Ibiki blinked when she seemed to sober up a little.

"Okay, whoo, alright," taking a deep breath, rubbing her face, she looked at her boss and her co-worker seriously, "do you know what's the worst nightmare of every medic Nin?"

Silence, and then:

"Running out of bandages?" Takato seemed to find his answer rather hilarious, because he began hiccupping a laugh. Midori threw the salt at him, and then sighed.

"Treating post-sex injuries," she said almost conversationally, but it quickly degraded into hysterics, "_sex injuries_."

Ibiki blinked slowly, his face taking on that peculiar expression that all his prisoners came to fear as he puzzled out together the information they were so stubbornly refusing to give him. _Kakashi and Iruka. Sex injuries._ He blinked again. _Ah, I see._

"Well," Ibiki said rather calmly, at least compared to his subordinates; Takato was laughing like an idiot and Midori kept rambling about 'gross' and 'dogs, oh my god, _the dogs_', "I always imagined that if Kakashi actually went after someone's ass, Gai would be the first in his list."

"_Ew_," apparently Takato wasn't drunk enough to _not_ get a mental image, and Ibiki smirked a little at his reaction.

Midori didn't find it funny.

"But, but, they don't _fit_," she waved her arms a bit wildly, "they just don't!"

"How so?" Ibiki glanced into the sake bottle, swirling the last remains a bit thoughtfully.

"They don't fit," the medic Nin declared heartily, staring purposely at Ibiki – all three of them, "Kakashi's taller than Iruka, that's why!"

"Now, now, Midori," the scarred man rested his chin on his hand, having long ago decided to enjoy the show, "an inch isn't that much of a difference."

"My mother used to, to…" Midori blinked as the room spun around her wildly, "what was I saying? Oh, yeah… my mother used to say," _hic_, "that an inch more made all the difference…" she grinned saucily up at Ibiki; it was fairly disturbing; "and that an inch less made all the indifference!"

Ibiki watched his head medic Nin and his favorite intelligence official laugh themselves to the point they fell off their chairs, and chuckled. _So Iruka and Kakashi, eh?_ He grinned a little. Iruka was too tightly wound to be healthy and Kakashi was too loose. He knew and valued both men, as friends and fellow shinobi and while he wouldn't have really thought about it, he figured that if it was what they truly wanted, they deserved it. The more he thought about it, the more Kakashi's sudden interest in Iruka seemed more reasonable, and Iruka's nervousness began to fall into place. Mentally, Ibiki began to puzzle their personalities together, meshing them into a relationship that, strangely enough, seemed to work. In the end, he could think only one thing:

_About goddamn time!_


	3. Lesson Three: Strength

**Training Kakashi.**

_Lesson Three: Strength._

On Friday, Iruka woke up to a silent apartment. He blinked a few times to clear sleep off his face and realized almost instantly that he was alone. The awkwardly set cup of coffee waiting by his night stand and the large piece of paper underneath it only cemented his suspicions that Kakashi had left the building. Carefully, he slipped the paper from under the plate and felt a small smile tug at his lips. '_Thanks, K.'_ was scrawled in a handwriting that was endearingly illegible, but Iruka was well versed in the art of decoding worse – his students even dared to call it _homework_ – and it only made him feel oddly warm inside. Around the simple words, eight paw prints signed along their master, which only made the Chuunin wonder how much it had taken Kakashi to get those ink marks; if anything, after nearly a week of finding dog fur even under his pillow, Iruka was starting to get a clearer picture of each of their personalities.

Guiltily, he was willing to admit he had never thought dogs _could_ have personalities, and such strong ones at that, but then again, any dog that had been trained by Kakashi had to be something special.

Unrolling from the bed with a strange sort of detached laziness, Iruka held the cup of coffee in one hand and his strange thank-you card in the other as he entered the main room of his apartment. It looked spotlessly clean in an unnatural way that showed it hadn't been Iruka who had cleaned it. He wasn't living in dirt all the time, of course, but he always had things to do that were less tedious and generally more important than cleaning thoroughfully. For some reason, the image of Kakashi actually _cleaning_ seemed blasphemous and wrong in all sort of awkward ways, which was why Iruka firmly vowed to not think about it. He was, however, eternally grateful for the fact his house didn't seem infested with fur and paw prints and general dog-related things that tended to put a rather annoying strain on his simple, easy life.

Perhaps he was reading too much into it, but he had his own suspicions on Kakashi's Ninken and their presence in his apartment. The dogs weren't there to protect their master – their master was hardly helpless or in need of rescue, except from, occasionally, himself – nor were they an intimidating force, at least not after the first impression. They were there because they kept Kakashi's mind busy, they chased away the boredom of being locked down because of his own recklessness.

Quite simply, Kakashi was lonely.

The thought amused and intrigued Iruka ever since he first grasped a faint notion of it. It had chased him the last few days, during his classes and his lunch breaks, leaving behind bewildered emotions that had no proper name yet. Kakashi was _lonely_. Iruka knew loneliness very well, like an old drinking buddy that had been at his side since before he knew what drinking or a buddy was. Iruka remembered meeting Kakashi the first time, the lazy, almost condescending air of a Jounin that knew himself safe in his own skin, the quiet, but not quite threatening whisper of power as he walked purposely into the Hokage's presence.

Iruka was willing to admit that Kakashi fascinated him in ways he wasn't entirely sure he could explain. He was sure he wasn't the only one that was captivated by that strange mix of careless attitude and deadly mystery that made up one of Konoha's greatest shinobis, yet at the same time, his presence had always been intimidating before. You couldn't be in the same room as Hatake Kakashi and forget, even for a moment, that he was _the_ Copy Nin, the legendary prodigy that knew over a thousand sure ways to kill you very dead without breaking so much as a sweat.

But the last days, those long, torturous days in which Iruka confirmed his suspicious that he was just _not_ a loved child of the gods, in which every possible disaster happened to him and then some… it had served to lift a metaphorical curtain over the strange, complex puzzle that was Kakashi. He wasn't intimidating when he couldn't really move and he wasn't all that blunt when you actually paid attention to the underhand sarcastic remarks.

Kakashi was friendly in a way only a deadly, poisonous, mean-looking cactus could be, but just as endearing as a fussed up kitten that had gotten caught up in the rain. Iruka barked half a laugh at the mental image and shook his head at himself; he was going insane.

He sat down in the main room of the apartment, the living room that had housed Kakashi for six long nights, still cradling his note and his coffee and turned to the window to drink. It was automatic, the gesture that had allowed him to eat in the same room as Kakashi and still not look at his face. Iruka watched the sun peek lazily from beyond the horizon, casting a warm, familiar glow over the city – living in a sixth floor had its advantages – clearing the blurred lines one by one until it became a bright image of healing wounds and promising future.

There was no more scent of dogs in the house, no more stray hairs that stubbornly clung to everything he owned and no more sardonic discussions about the quality of red meat between eight highly intelligent canines and one very amused Jounin. There was silence and just a little bit of melancholy in the air.

There was no Kakashi in Iruka's apartment today.

"All is as it's supposed to be," the brown haired Chuunin muttered absent mindedly as he raised the lukewarm liquid to his lips.

He spluttered in shock and coughed violently, seemingly intent on spitting out his tongue, his trachea and at least one of his lungs clear out of his body; but whether it was because the coffee tasted like the bastard love child of an ashtray and a three-day old carcass or because he happened to look at the other side of his note and it turned out to be one of the extra special Come Come Paradise illustrations from the glossy paper edition, it was unclear.

--

There were two types of days for Kakashi, good days and bad days. Good days could be defined by a great number of things: a nice meal, sunshine, a good thunderstorm, clear advance in training, a new issue of the Come Come series, winning one of Gai's silly challenges… basically anything that didn't herald a bad day. And that was mostly an attempt to part Kakashi with his most valued possessions: his life, his duty and his friends. Thus, in the great scale of things, Kakashi had a fair number of good days when compared with the bad ones, but he was not going to get careless about it. He enjoyed every moment, treasured every second and hoped for the best.

This was a very simple system and he figured he was doing something right, because he had survived until now.

But now something was nagging at him, six days that didn't exactly fit into either category. Six days he spent regaining use of his body and his chakra in the living quarters of one Umino Iruka. Those had been… _strange_, in a way that being the leader of a team that included awkward love polygons of no definite shape, one very enthusiastic, overly loud vessel for the Kyuubi, one overly dramatic survivor from a lost clan that could take brooding and angsting to a whole new level and a pink haired girl with a split personality disorder and a complex on regards to her forehead couldn't even compare.

Kakashi was at loss.

Kakashi was _never_ at loss.

Kakashi stood on even ground with his enemies and analyzed his problems until the Logical and Wise course of action came to him by either sheer genius or sheer dumb luck. Kakashi always knew what to do, because really, he was convinced nothing was ever as dire and complicated as others made it out to be. Everything had a solution, perhaps not a nice solution, but a solution in the end; it was just a matter to think straight, keep emotions away, stay cool and play it safe.

But this _was_ complicated and it _was_ driving Kakashi up the proverbial wall and slamming his head right into the proverbial ceiling.

Before he left with Jiraiya, Naruto never wasted a moment to shower praise and kind words about his previous mentor. Kakashi hardly paid attention to it, because he was not the type to get jealous about the relationships that existed around his teammates. He'd humored the kid a few times, even pat him in the head once – and nearly had his hand bitten off for his efforts, as well – but it had never seemed too remarkable. Umino Iruka was a teacher in the Academy, that was as much as Kakashi knew and that was all he had needed to know.

Until that thrice damned Chuunin exam came and fucked everything backwards.

The village had suffered considerable damage, the Third had been killed, Sasuke had been marked, Naruto had almost-but-not-quite died more times than Kakashi could care to remember and things had generally been Not Good. And amidst the chaos of those turbulent days, one memory stood up as a sore thumb in the Jounin's mind: a rather infuriated Chuunin demanding to know on what grounds he _dared_ to put up his team up for the examination.

To be completely honest, Kakashi could name more than a handful of reasons why it had been a Bad Idea – Sasuke's name came up many times in that list – but it had also proven to be good in that awkward sort of way that Kakashi had resigned himself to be his hand in life.

After the initial butting of heads, Kakashi had dismissed Iruka's concern as over-protectiveness of his students and nothing else, perhaps even a queer sort of expression of his teacher-student bond with them. But then he'd found out more about Iruka's relationship with Naruto, and Kakashi was intrigued.

People, as a rule, ran away from the boy, seeing the creature he held inside rather than him, and Kakashi couldn't really blame them. He had been on duty the night the Kyuubi attacked and he could methodically and in great detail explain just how _bad_ that day had been. But not Iruka, and that was a curiosity in and of itself. Iruka had lost precious people during the attack, like many, if not everyone else in the village. Iruka had been left to grow up alone and fend for himself in life, dealing with the natural hardships of maturity on his own. Kakashi could rationalize that and see, in a strange perspective, why the usually cheerful man showed so much interest in a child like Naruto, they were oddly alike.

That was not what had Kakashi standing upside down the ceiling of his apartment, concentrating a steady flow of chakra to his feet while he carried enough weight to make Gai cry tears of overwhelming joy. What bugged him beyond words was the fact Iruka _cared_. Iruka cared about Naruto and Sakura and Sasuke and, strangely enough, him as well. The Chuunin, aside episodes of hilarious embarrassment that made Kakashi grin sadistically, slid effortlessly into a routine with his houseguest – plus dogs – and didn't seem overly ruffled by the whole affair. He didn't ask what the hell was going through Kakashi's mind or why he was there, and he certainly didn't ask what he had been doing that had left him so weakened. Iruka just took it all in stride with a smile, a light blush and a strangely endearing charm that made Kakashi wonder.

"You have no sense of self preservation," Pakkun informed him tartly as the apathic dog snorted in his face.

Kakashi blinked for a moment; before he realized he was standing on his head and that his feet were certainly no longer in the ceiling. He blinked again.

"Buy him flowers and serenade him all you want," the dog continued, his furry face contorted in a rather unamused expression that would have made the Jounin snort, if he hadn't been sure he would get a bite for his trouble, "but for the love of anything sacred, stop daydreaming while you're training."

Konoha's infamous Copy Nin wanted to inform his dear friend that he did not, in fact, daydream. Why, he didn't even have the proper setting! But something told him Pakkun would do what he always did when he thought Kakashi was being particularly stupid _and_ stubborn: sleep. Thus he merely glared a little, rolled back to his feet, moved his neck a bit to get the stiffness out of it and jumped back to the ceiling to start the exercise all over again.

Exactly seventeen minutes later, he fell off the ceiling again, when an image of Iruka looking out of his window to find Kakashi serenading him with a bouquet of flowers in his right hand made its way through his muddled mind.

He found Umino Iruka to be strangely alluring in a way he hadn't thought of in a very long while. Finding people alluring like that tended to be troublesome and annoying, since Kakashi couldn't keep them at bay and they eventually wormed themselves deep into his life in ways that put them constantly in danger and made them an exploitable weakness in the eyes of his enemies.

Besides the obvious disadvantages, Kakashi faced a new, interesting challenge, but not something he had never head of: Iruka belonged to the male species, which simply made the idea to pursue this ridiculous… _interest_ even more ridiculous and more difficult.

Not that Kakashi was actually thinking of _pursuing_ Iruka in any shape or form, because that would be openly asking for trouble and Bad Things, and he wasn't that stupid anymore.

Kakashi chose to ignore the snickers from his beloved companions and instead settled to consider this new, bemusing development.

_Hm._

--

Iruka was having a bad day, and despite the ridiculousness of it, all he could really think about was what exactly he was going to yell at Kakashi's ear for that horrid piece of… that… that _thing_ he had left in his apartment as a parting gift.

The sharp blade whispered by his ear as he dodged instinctively.

_Concentrate!_ Iruka's eyes slid for a second at the crowd of terrified students that had, _mercifully_, decided to take shelter under the shadow of a tree, figuring safety was in numbers. He was thankful his attacker didn't seem particularly concerned with the children, although that meant his single minded attention was focused on one thing: Iruka, and how he was going to be killed to death.

"You… you _bastard!_"

Iruka needed a plan. More accurately, he needed a plan five minutes ago, but his mind refused to work properly and that stupid, _obscene_ piece of debauchery Kakashi had left as a thank-you note was to blame. Iruka found it strangely ironic in a way he couldn't contemplate properly, _because he was too busy getting assassinated, goddamnit!_

…if he were to be completely honest and objective – which was kinda difficult, with the whole sword-wielding, angry-as-hell young man howling at his face – Iruka would probably admit that the poison currently running through his veins was at fault as well.

It just wasn't fair.

"Mitzuo!" Maybe yelling at his opponent wasn't going to fix anything, but Iruka really didn't want to fight in front of the children, and much less against one of his former students. "Please stop this nonsense, you don't want-"

"Shut _up_!" The younger man wielded that sword like a possessed thing, swinging it dangerously close to Iruka's nose; in fact, he would already be one nose short if it weren't for his fast reflexes.

Okay, officially, the whole thing had gone from _'enraged ex-student that wants to maybe avenge a very low grade in Stealth'_ to _'psychopath who wants an Iruka head to hang in his wall'_. If he were to steal a quote from one of his former students, Iruka would describe the situation as 'troublesome'.

The scarred man narrowed his eyes, smiled grimly and leaped into the fight; all bets were off now.

--

"Do you know why Iruka will never be a Jounin, Kakashi?" Tsunade spoke without turning to the silver haired shinobi standing respectfully – and maybe a tad bit fearfully – a few steps behind her, her eyes fixed on the group of children that were currently busy giving happy yelps of 'Iruka-sensei is so _cool!_' and 'way to go, Iruka-sensei!'. Kakashi wondered if this was a thick question. "He's got potential and skills, after all," the Fifth smiled almost ruefully, "but he's too kind and too much of a peace-lover. Had you ever heard about that before? A shinobi that dislikes violence."

"Hn."

For someone who disliked violence as much as the Hokage implied, Kakashi was rather impressed at the neat, effective and rather brutal way in which Iruka had disarmed, disabled and then beaten his opponent. It was a reminder to many that while he was a charming, nice person, Iruka was not someone you really messed with. He _was_ a Chuunin, after all.

It made the… _infatuation_ that had suddenly seized him a bit more complicated, though. Iruka could and would kick his ass when he found out, and worst part was, Kakashi would let him.

"Regardless, I want you to investigate a bit more about this Mitzuo character," Tsunade was already busy with other things, walking briskly away from the scene of the crime, "he was not yet listed as one of our missing Nins, and this worries me. There's been too much silence lately, on all fronts; this could be the first breeze of a storm."

"Yes, Hokage-sama," Kakashi bowed, spared one last glance to the sheepish-looking Iruka and then disappeared in a puff.

Tsunade wondered if the bet she had going on with Ibiki would pay off or not; she really couldn't see much chemistry between a Jounin and a Chuunin that didn't share anything else in common but their students. Then again, with Naruto in that mix, the Hokage couldn't predict anything with certainty.

Even away from the village, that boy had a way of _remaining_ suitable for the future Hokage of Konoha.

--

"I'm still not talking to you, I'll have you know."

Iruka winced a little when Midori set her bag on the counter and glared at him with a faint sense of rightful indignation.

"I—"

"Not. Talking."

"But—"

"Sht!"

Iruka sighed in resignation, this was an argument he was doomed to lose, if anything because he had no right to debate, apparently. Midori's quick fingers poked his wounds a bit too harshly, before she extracted a balm and bandages from her bag. Iruka's injuries had been dressed properly by the medic Nins in the Academy, but Midori seemed to take it as a personal insult if he refused to let her treat his wounds. She glared at him until his vest and shirt were gone and the slightly reddened bandages around his chest, abdomen and his left shoulder were visible. She was a good friend, but a bit overbearing and even exasperating on occasion.

"I can't believe you didn't tell me you and Kakashi are doing the nasty!"

A bit hung up on information, too.

"For the last time, I'm _not!_"

Regardless of its status of truthfulness.

"_Ha_," Midori cawed viciously at him, pulling down on the dressings of the poison darts a bit more roughly than strictly necessary, "I know what I saw, Mister, or are you calling me blind as well?"

"There's a perfectly reasonable explanation for that, you know!" Iruka snorted. "You just refuse to listen!"

"Lies!" The puncture wounds were clean and properly cauterized, so Midori only rubbed a bit of the salve and refastened the bandages. Iruka winced from the vindictive strength behind the motion. "You had your face buried in his crotch. Your _face_. In his _crotch_. There's but one 'reasonable explanation' for that, and it is you're getting it on with one of Konoha's deadliest and you didn't even bothered to _gossip_." Midori paused. "Also, I feel cheated, you _could_ have told me you were gay, you know."

"It's not like _that!_" Iruka felt like banging his head against the wall. "I tripped!"

"This is from the guy who sent that Mitzuo brat to my office with a concussion and a handful of broken bones, aside showing off incredible skill in disarming and humiliating him?" Midori snorted. "You tripped. Of course, everything seems clearer now, only, you know, _not_."

"It was an accident! I stepped on one of the dogs and I tripped!" Iruka was getting a bit annoyed here; he was injured, poisoned, tired and _aching_. Couldn't something go his way, for once?

Midori sank her fingers around the gash in his chest, from the first strike of the sword, which he hadn't been fast enough to dodge; he'd been too busy taking a couple of poisoned darts at that moment. She seemed to deem everything in order, because she merely applied another doze of that horribly sticky salve and wrapped the wound again.

"What I'd like to know, though," she grinned maliciously at him, "is who's bottoming tonight. I hope he's considerate, playing rough in your current state wouldn't be wise."

Iruka turned red, then green, then purple and finally plum before he bellowed, at the end of his rope and the top of his lungs:

"_I'm not fucking Kakashi!_"

He immediately turned ashen white when he found said silver haired Copy Nin leaning against the doorway, staring at him almost curiously, one eyebrow quirked upwards. Midori eeped a bit, while Iruka made a mental list of all the things he hadn't done and which he would never do now, because Kakashi was hundred percent going to _kill_ him. Mother Earth was still away on lala-land and _not_ swallowing him up as she should.

The Jounin blinked his visible eye, looking non-challant.

"Yo."


	4. Lesson Four: Confidence

**Training Kakashi.**

_Lesson Four: Confidence._

"Yo." 

_This is it,_ Iruka and Midori thought in unison, _I'm dead. I'm so dead it stinks._ The Copy Nin stared at them through a half lidded, very bored eye, not showing any particular reaction to Iruka's little outburst. And of course, neither knew how long he'd been standing there… what he'd _heard_… 

"Well!" Midori said briskly, shoving the remaining bandages and the balm back into her bag. "Gotta go, Ibiki-sama wants a report on that Mitzuo boy and… yeah… you know…" The bandages around Iruka's chest weren't properly done yet, but she cared much more about her survival than his friend's at the moment. After all, since Kakashi seemed to like getting into Iruka's pants, the logical thing was that he wouldn't kill him. 

Much. 

"Ta ta!" She waved at the outraged Iruka and then slipped past the intimidating Kakashi without another word. 

_Traitor!_ Iruka's mind screamed as the door of his apartment slammed shut and only he and Kakashi remained. He _and_ Kakashi. Kakashi and him. Alone. In the apartment. After he billowed at the top of his lungs that he was _not_ fucking him. 

_Mommy._

"Charming," the Copy Nin muttered with a snort, before he made his way over to Iruka; the ruthless sarcastic remark died at the tip of his tongue, however, when he realized Iruka was _afraid_. Of _him_. 

Kakashi swore brilliantly and colorfully in his mind, before he stepped closer to the Chuunin, who seemed to be seconds away from actually _fidgeting_. The notion was ridiculous. Iruka was still sitting in the kitchen counter, legs swinging and feeling a bit like a kid. A kid that was due some serious, evil, twisted punishment. He reigned in the whimper, if only because even in the face of mismatched-eyed death, he was _not_ going to show fear. Even if that fear was currently busy eating the flesh away from his bones. 

"We need to talk," Kakashi murmured, and Iruka flinched a little when the Jounin's hands got a hold of his half way done bandages, "about Mitzuo." 

_Mitzuo?_ Oh, Iruka remembered Mitzuo, just not currently. Currently he was busy trying to figure out how Kakashi was going to kill him. Because surely, having his hands all over his body was just in preparation for some terrible jutsu that would put Iruka out of his misery and not just to fix the bandages that Midori hadn't set properly. Kakashi finished wrapping the cloth with surprisingly gentle fingers and Iruka was not dead. Yet. Through the bright blush that seemed permanently set on his features, the school teacher looked at his former house guest almost curiously. 

"So?" 

It took Iruka nearly a full minute to figure out what Kakashi meant. In the mean time, the Jounin stepped back to prudent distance again, leaning on the kitchen table with all the cool and aloofness of someone who had done no wrong… 

…and who incidentally wasn't dancing with glee under his skin, because he'd gotten away with close contact with a suddenly very _fascinating_ young man that seemed to have rather _fetching_ conversations about dear, old Kakashi with his neurotic neighbor. 

Kakashi was torn between amusement and curiosity, but it was all blurred under the weight of Duty. 

"Oh? Oh! Mitzuo, right." Once it became clear that he was not getting killed, Iruka decided by silent agreement with Kakashi – and his loss if he didn't agree – that what had just happened was Not To Be Discussed, thus he slipped back into Chuunin mode. "He's fifteen, graduated three years ago from my class, passed the Chuunin exam a year ago. He did a few C-rank missions, nothing extraordinary and then we sent him over to work with Hidden Cloud in a two-man team with a Jounin a little over a month ago. His team was due to report in a week." 

Kakashi nodded. 

"I read that, I want your impression of him, though," he shrugged, "teachers tend to know their students better than their parents." 

"My impression?" Iruka snorted dryly, pointing to his bandaged torso, "you mean before or after he tried to part my head from my body?" 

_Catty_, Kakashi thought with bright amusement, but he supposed he liked that. He preferred that to Iruka wanting to kill him because he had a tiny, not so innocent interest in him and it _showed_, but that was for another time. 

Right now, Kakashi was waiting for the explosion. 

"He's serious, studious, brooding…" Iruka considered his former student for a moment, creating a blurry picture in his mind eye, "and he's got a temper. Really bad temper. And he could never write my name properly either." 

Iruka started laughing, but it wasn't the hysterical laughter of a man going into shock because one of his beloved former students had gone berserker at him in the middle of a field trip with a bunch of kids that only cared to think how _cool_ it was that their teacher could actually kick ass. Iruka was laughing like someone who'd been told a rather amusing joke, soft chuckles that were controlled, calm. 

Kakashi continued waiting. 

The Chuunin was bottling everything inside; Kakashi had seen it all before, he knew what he was doing. Iruka would brush off the incident, smile brightly and move on, because really, clinging onto a betrayal tended to leave behind a sorry list of corpses and Iruka didn't like those. No one really did, not even Ibiki, because corpses couldn't talk. And they rot and stank and generally made a fuss. 

No, no one liked corpses, but Iruka in particular didn't. 

Kakashi didn't like them, either. 

Silence licked the walls as minutes went by, detached from the strange struggle that had no opponents and no winners in its line up. If there was one thing that Kakashi was close and personal with – aside the entire collection of the Come Come series – was coping mechanisms. He had a few himself, not all of which were healthy, but he was Sharingan Kakashi: he'd stopped trying to be healthy many years ago. He could almost predict what Iruka was trying to do; the non-challance, the easy laughter, the gentle smiles… _because if they don't see the tears_, Kakashi recalled Obito's timid words under the shadow of a great oak, _then they don't look for a wound_. 

Kakashi didn't have to look for the wound, he knew it was there, and that was it. 

"Let's go," Iruka looked up as Kakashi's hand wrapped securely around his wrist. He stared at the long fingers for a long moment, bewildered. "Dinner," Kakashi clarified, "my treat." 

Iruka shrugged, nodding, and Kakashi wondered if he knew he was the first person ever to get a free meal out of him. Probably didn't. The shirt and the vest went on –Iruka contemplated the fact he'd just had a conversation with Kakashi while he was shirtless, and how it was possible he hadn't stumbled around his words – and they covered the wounds and the bandages. 

Kakashi didn't need the sharingan to see the ones that couldn't even bleed. 

-- 

Tsunade's eyes scanned the report in front of her wearily. Standing stiffly before her, Ibiki tried to maintain his composure for as long as he could, but the interrogation of one of their own, a kid at that, it left him tired and pissed off. 

It was Bad. 

It was the sort of Bad that heralded wars, deaths and unholy towers of paperwork to file through. The Leaf had lost much of its strength when Orochimaru had attacked and afterwards, one disaster after another; they had stability, but they were still weakened. And someone was taking advantage of it. What little information Ibiki had gathered wasn't enough to clearly point out who the leader of the operation was, but he knew that at least that two more former Leaf Chuunins were out there, mingling along the residents of the village with intentions of a strike that wasn't even clear enough. 

Ibiki was frustrated. 

Hours of interrogation had shed only the barest light onto the whole picture; whatever had been done to break the boy's spirit and turn him into a mindless minion was effective, quick and deadly. He already had a group of Jounin scanning the village and searching for anything suspicious; apparently the attack on Iruka had been unscheduled and merely a burst of resentment and hatred that sent a plan crumbling. After a look on Mitzuo's record, Ibiki realized it was precisely his temper what had tampered his growth as a shinobi and had nominated him to a non-violent environment in hopes it would get better. 

They still had no news on his Jounin companion, and that in and of itself was worrying. 

Mitzuo was a kid, a talented kid, perhaps, but still a kid. His mind could still be influenced by others and breaking his will could be considerably easy – as Ibiki noted during the investigation – but his companion, Hyuga Akito, was not only a responsible, capable man, he also belonged to a proud clan in the village and was a seasoned, experienced Jounin. The very idea that he had been seduced away from his duty to Konoha was more than a little frightening. 

"Is this Sound's work?" 

If Ibiki had been half the man he was – half the _ninja_ he was – he would have flinched; Tsunade was not known for beating around the bush. He steadied his features into the perpetual calm, almost apathic gesture that instilled fear in most and shook his head. 

"It's too early to know, the prisoner," _prisoner_, because that was no longer a member of their village, one of their own; he was a traitor, "didn't know much about their actual mission. He didn't even know who the target was; he was here for support only." 

"Are you certain?" Ibiki's eyes narrowed, even against his will, at the implication that his work was less than perfect. Tsunade seemed to notice, because her lips twitched slightly. "Of course, I'm sorry." The Fifth sighed, rubbing the bridge of her nose with a thin, elegant hand. "This is just messed up. I sent Kakashi to question Iruka – he was the last, trustworthy source of information on this boy. When he gets back, tell him to form a four-man team and dispatch them," Ibiki shivered a little when he caught sight of the sheer iciness of the Hokage's eyes, "I will not have someone corrupting our youth like that. Dismissed." 

The scarred man bowed jerkily, before he turned on his heel and stalked sharply out of the room. Tsunade glared down at the reports piling on her desk and then looked through the window towards Konoha; her eyes narrowed, if possible, even more. 

"I will _not_ allow it." 

-- 

In retrospect, Kakashi figured out this wasn't exactly what Tsunade had meant when she'd ordered him to 'gather information'. In the present, with a badly drunk Iruka thrown carelessly over his lap, Kakashi very much didn't care. 

After a slightly awkward dinner – which consisted mostly on take out from the tiny cart outside Kakashi's apartment and which involved an unholy amount of dodging from Iruka's part to avoid seeing his face – they had migrated, almost naturally, upstairs. 

He hadn't really thought about it, but Iruka was probably the first person Kakashi actually _invited_ into his apartment – Gai didn't count, because you didn't invite Gai; he let himself inside in the middle of a complicated, ridiculously overdone speech meant to intimidate Kakashi but which generally landed the silver haired Jounin annoyed, half asleep and mumbling about setting new traps. But _this_, this had seemed… natural. Kakashi spent nearly a week in Iruka's; he could tolerate the other's presence in his space for a little while, right? Right. Besides, they had remained around the small low table and Iruka's eyes had been busier contemplating the view through the windows than the scarce belongings around the one-room apartment. He hadn't asked – he _never_ asked – and he hadn't touched. He just sat next to Kakashi, watching the night through the glass, drank the sake along a strange, rather confusing conversation about his students and the traitor and was, well, just Iruka. 

Kakashi watched with certain amusement as Iruka struggled to reach the bottle in the low table, lost his balance and found himself thrown across his host's lap. He seemed to find it unbearably funny, because he began laughing – more laughter and no tears, and now Kakashi was getting a little bit worried. 

"He's a good boy," Iruka said softly after the hilarity died out, still starting at the wooden floor and not very conscious of where exactly he was anymore, "he just had a very bad teacher." 

Ah, there it was. Perhaps Kakashi didn't have Ibiki's talent when it came to interrogate people, nor he knew that well how the mind worked; but he knew dinner and a bottle – or two – of sake did the trick most of the time. Iruka was used to hiding things behind the smile, a mask ten times more effective than the piece of cloth wrapped around Kakashi's face, but he was just human and he would speak, eventually. 

"He made a choice," Kakashi, regretfully, obeyed his shrieking conscience and set the teacher sitting straight again; it wouldn't do to take advantage, not yet, anyway, "we all make choices. It has nothing to do with who our teachers are." 

"Easy for you to say!" Iruka blinked, he was sure Kakashi had just _one_ eye, but he kept seeing two, and two noses and two distorted mouths. He continued, "You're one damn good one!" 

The topic actually touched a nerve, and a flash of something vaguely like resentment shot up and down Kakashi's spine; he didn't let it show. 

"They are not my students anymore." 

Iruka snorted. 

"They haven't tried to _kill_ you." 

_Yet_, Kakashi added silently, thinking about Sasuke and his dark eyes, the legacy of tragedy that clung to him like a second skin. He had never actually had a Genin team before team 7; they never passed and he never bothered with those that didn't pass his test. He wondered, not for the first time, if he had designed that test specifically to fail them all and _not_ teach anyone. Wouldn't be the first time his subconscious acted in a way that his conscious mind couldn't put to words, either. 

But his team had passed, they had become _his_. They'd all gone on silly missions that made Naruto's temper flare, they'd all tasted Sakura's horrible attempts at cooking and pleasing Sasuke, they'd all suffered Sasuke's cold shoulder when it rained. They had been together and they weren't anymore, and strangely enough, Kakashi missed them. 

He wondered if he was coming down with a strange sort of illness that had no definite name, but which most people would call Loneliness. 

"I really didn't sleep with you," Iruka fell forward, before Kakashi could catch him, and banged his head into the low table, snickering at himself and his own pain. "You wouldn't want to, anyway." 

Kakashi blinked at the sudden, rather swift change of topic and mood; there was bitterness in the cheerful voice Iruka tried to project. Kakashi's own cup remained untouched by his side, away from where it could spill or he could be tempted to damn everything to hell, pull down the mask, drown it and show Iruka how much he _would_ want to. 

"No," the Copy Nin muttered wryly, "I guess I wouldn't." 

Iruka snored against the wooden table, oblivious to the world outside. 


	5. Lesson Five: Patience

**Training Kakashi.**

_Lesson Five: Patience._

_It's raining, fat drops of water that feel like little punches when they hit his shoulders, but Kakashi has a mission, he will not be stopped by something as trivial as the rain. His legs ache and threaten to give out, but he doesn't care, the only thing that matters is to keep going, to _find_ him. The words echo in his mind, bouncing around aimlessly and knocking on some memories that would be better to leave untouched, forgotten._

…died in a raid …left a child and the mother behind …the clan will take care of them, of course …I wish there had been a better way to tell him …he didn't take it well. 

_Kakashi closes his eyes tightly, concentrating on that endless list of shinobi sayings and belts his emotions behind his mask. He's not the one that's been hurt, after all, he has no reason to cry or feel sad; he's here because Obito is his teammate and a friend, however reluctant. They go on missions together and eat together and occasionally fall asleep together while they watch the night sky. They fight and bicker and generally drive Rin and their sensei up a wall more often than not, but Kakashi is not about to abandon his friend, not now. There's no rule in the book as to how one should comfort one's best friend when said best friend's father has died, thus Kakashi figures he'll improvise and hope for the best._

There,_ he thinks, jumping over a fallen tree and into a small clearing. Obito is sitting against the thick trunk of an oak tree, watching a deceptively large puddle of water before him. Kakashi slows down until he stops, standing next to him. He is soaked, but Obito seems oddly dry and calm amidst the raging storm._

_"Did sensei send you to fetch me?" Obito's legs are curled against his chest, his arms wrapped tightly around them as he rests his chin on his knees. He looks small. Kakashi shakes his head._

_"I, uh…" He frowns a little; perhaps he should have thought out his words first, before he ran out into the forest like a possessed idiot. "I heard, you know, the news," Obito doesn't say a thing, "about your father."_

_"Ah, I see."_

_Kakashi blinks, startled, when his friend turns to face him. Instead of the tears or the sadness he has been expecting, he finds a gently smiling face. It makes him feel warm and cold at the same time, and Kakashi doesn't understand why._

_"You're very kind Kakashi," Obito pats the grass next to him, motioning Kakashi to sit down, "you didn't have to bother, but you still came, and I'm glad."_

_"You're my friend," the silver haired boy says quietly as if to explain everything, frown still adorning his features as it gives away his perplexity._

_Obito startles a bit, turning to Kakashi with wide, surprised eyes. Kakashi answers by glaring a bit defensively and sliding to the ground with a loud, wet 'plop'. They measure each other as seriously as a pair of children can, before Obito chuckles and shrugs away the tension. Kakashi still doesn't understand him or his actions, and the silence consumes them both again._

_"Didn't you love your father?" Kakashi asks bluntly, tactlessly, after a while, because he's a kid and he's confused._

_Obito blinks._

_"I loved my father very much, Kakashi," he smiles again, that gentle, glowing smile that makes Kakashi want to flee and get closer at the same time, "he was my most important person."_

_Like a moth, the flame._

_"Then why aren't you crying? Even I—" _Even I cried when my father died, and I thought I really hated him. 

_"Because…" Obito turns his eyes to the storm again, still looking small, still making Kakashi uncomfortable in ways he can't understand, "because if they don't see the tears, then they don't look for a wound, and if they can't find the wound, they won't heal it." He pats his chest. "Serious wounds are healed and turned into scars, but then we forget about them because the scars don't ache anymore and we commit the same mistakes again. I don't want that to happen to me." Obito clenches his hand around his shirt, eyes glassy as his smile becomes strained. "If the wound doesn't heal, it'll keep bleeding and aching, right? I want it to ache, Kakashi, I don't want to forget."_

_The blood-red eyes turn to him, the sharingan __threatening to swallow him whole as the shadow glares down at him._

_"Who's your wound now, 'Kashi?"_

Kakashi awoke with a jolt, eyes widened and breathing raged. The sheets pooled at his waist as he tried to find his center again and stop the panic attack before it could fully shape up. In his nightstand, the clock told him cheerfully that it was almost time to wake up properly and he prepared to do just that, when he caught sight of a strange bundle near the table. Closer inspection revealed its identity, and Kakashi groaned. 

Curled tightly under the blanket thrown carelessly over his shoulders, Iruka snored peacefully, like only someone who had more alcohol than blood in his veins could. 

-- 

"Iruka-sensei?" 

No answer. 

Kakashi quirked an eyebrow and approached the snoring figure sprawled all over his table with the same caution one would approach a sleeping dragon. The dogs were out for the weekend, prowling around the perimeter of the village and being, well, _dogs_, meaning there hadn't been anyone to witness the amusing display of one drunken schoolteacher propositioning not quite subtly to Kakashi; for which he was glad, since it meant he wouldn't have to deal with barked taunts whenever he wanted to train. They were smart dogs, they understood the basics of the ninja way and they were loyal to their master, but they couldn't hope to understand the sheer complexities of _Kakashi's_ ninja way. If they were to know that not only did Kakashi was starting to develop feelings for Iruka, but that those feelings were reciprocated, they would never understand why it really didn't matter and why Kakashi wouldn't pursue them. 

It was better this way. 

"Iruka!" 

The brown eyes snapped open and a kunai was flying at Kakashi's head at an admirable speed before he could finish the thought. The Copy Nin dodged the attack easily, but couldn't quite silence the surprised '_whoa'_ that bursted through as Iruka rolled from his lifeless position against the table, to a defensive crouch that pretty much said: mess with me and _die_. At least until the full blast of sunlight caught him in the face and he realized who exactly his 'opponent' was. 

Then, as expected, he blushed brightly, fumbling with his weapon as he sat back, bewildered. 

"Kakashi-sensei?" 

The Jounin smiled cheerfully behind his mask, eyes closed as he waved dismissingly at Iruka's worries. 

"Yo." 

-- 

"I'm tempted to ask how you survived the last twenty-odd years, but I'm afraid your tragic story parallels Naruto's," Iruka paused for a moment, feeling Kakashi's eyes bore on his back sharply, "take out for the win." 

The Copy Nin actually snorted at the notion; before Iruka heard a slurping noise that probably meant Kakashi had finished his noodles. He didn't know if the man ate abnormally fast, or if it was simply so that they could face each other while Iruka ate. 

"Well…" Kakashi entered Iruka's line of sight nonchalantly, looking far too awake and happy for Iruka's taste; but then again, Kakashi wasn't nursing the last tendrils of a hang over and waiting for the cocktail of medicine to make effect. "Really, can you blame me?" 

Iruka remembered the coffee he'd drank the morning before and shuddered violently. 

"No, not really." He munched on his own noodles a bit thoughtfully, then swallowed and glared at Kakashi a bit darkly when it caused his head to ache some more. "You're a manipulative son of a bitch; by the way, I didn't need to get drunk to talk." 

Kakashi grinned. 

"No, but it was fun, wasn't it?" The look Iruka was giving him showed he wasn't amused in the slightless, so Kakashi put a temporary stop to his thought process – sorting out the information Iruka had given him, trying to guess what Tsunade would do with it and forming a plan to present to Ibiki some time later in the day – and decided Iruka was getting too comfortable for a guy who had practically admitted to wanting to sleep with him and who had been invited to his apartment. Kakashi's grin turned malicious and sadistic. 

"At least there was no need for sex to coerce you." 

Iruka spat his coffee all over the table, coughing violently as his face skipped the red and turned a rather fetching shade of purple. Kakashi laughed, even as he dodged another kunai aimed at his face. 

Life was good. 

-- 

"That took you remarkably longer than I'd have thought," Ibiki said slowly, cautionously, because he could outrank Kakashi in titles and paper all he wanted, but Kakashi was _Kakashi_ and if you pissed him off chances were you wouldn't get the opportunity to apologize. 

Dead people never apologized, after all. 

"Hn," the Copy Nin stared out through the window of Ibiki's office, "Iruka had a lot to say." 

"Yes," the scarred man muttered dryly, eyeing the scribbled notes distastefully, "I see." 

There was a long silence, common when dealing with Kakashi, before he shrugged. 

"I want Anko, Raidou and Genma with me," he paused when he realized Ibiki was arching an eyebrow at him. "What?" 

"Nothing, nothing, but the Hokage never said you couldn't take a Chuunin along," Ibiki took his chances and smirked, "I thought you would, though." 

Kakashi considered the possibility of starting a fight for about two seconds before he dismissed the idea as childish. Ibiki was teasing – in his own, strange… _Ibiki-ish_ way, which mostly only served to show that he actually trusted Kakashi. Liked him, too. So the idea of throwing a few fists was out of the picture and he merely grinned, shrugging. He was used to teasing, and not to be teased back, but it was what friends did, once in a while, when they found out something particularly juicy about their friends. The fact Ibiki knew didn't disturb Kakashi in the slightless; Ibiki could talk with someone for five minutes and deduce their childhood traumas, of course he'd know one of his friends had a fleeting fancy on someone. 

"It's not serious," Kakashi looked back at Ibiki, daring him to contradict, "it'll pass in time. It'll probably be gone by the time we get back from this mission." 

Ibiki was silent for a moment, before he nodded. Kakashi was one of the most complex psychologies in the village, one even Ibiki had trouble sorting out on occasion, but he couldn't but feel a ghost of pity for the silver haired Jounin: Kakashi was wasting something precious there, and he would learn to regret it, later. But Ibiki was not stupid enough as to point it out bluntly; Kakashi needed to stumble a bit to appreciate and re-evaluate his priorities and his wants. He just hoped Iruka would be patient enough to stand by the occasionally erratic, always annoying Jounin while he figured out the one thing no one – not even a genius of Kakashi's caliber – could know for sure. 

"They'll meet you in Tsunade-sama's office in an hour," Ibiki snorted, "do try to not be overly late; I hear she didn't sleep too well." 

"Warning duly noted," the silver haired Jounin nodded solemnly, before he disappeared into a puff of smoke. 

Ibiki snorted. 

-- 

"Stalker," Iruka muttered half heartedly as he watched his students tumble around the grasslands behind the Academy, stretching and preparing for the special exam. 

Kakashi merely grinned, shrugging off the insult as he made himself comfortable on his perch at the fence that separated the open green space from the Academy's grounds. Iruka rolled his eyes. Saturday Taijutsu exams were not all that uncommon; they served to analyze each student's stamina and their willingness to battle. They also served as a way to release bottled excitement in ways the delicate classroom lessons couldn't. Iruka always put up with these exams because they were necessary, but they always seemed to bring the absolutely worst out of his students. 

Except for today, when they gathered by the usual area and began stretching as they chatted excitedly in low voices. 

"What do you know," Kakashi mused wryly, "you have a fan club." 

"Of course no—" Iruka blinked. His students were suddenly very intently watching them, seemingly awed beyond words as they whispered excitedly. He coughed a bit uncomfortably. "Of course not, they're watching you, you're the legendary Jounin." 

"Really." 

"Of course!" Iruka snorted. "If I moved away from you, they'd keep their attention on you. I'm their teacher, they know me. You're the stranger, the great Sharingan Kakashi; it excites them." 

"I could say something _exciting_," Kakashi grinned shamelessly when Iruka glared hotly, "but I'm more interested in testing your theory. Move to that tree," which was ten meters away from Kakashi and his perch, "and see what happens." 

Iruka did and the eyes of his students migrated with him in unison. His eyes narrowed when he felt more than saw Kakashi grin. He stomped twenty meters in the opposite direction, but the results where the same. 

"Well, _bite_ me," he groused a bit disheartedly once he was standing next to Kakashi again, causing the silver haired Jounin to snort loudly. 

"I would, but the children, you know, they're _watching_," Iruka glared, frustrated with the teasing words, face aflame, and then did something no one had done since forever: he reached a hand and pressed it against Kakashi's chest, causing the Copy Nin to let out all the breath in his lungs in a surprised gasp, and then he _pushed_. 

The next thing Kakashi knew was that he was flat on his back, staring at the clouds as Iruka huffed with as much dignity as he could and stormed to where his students were gaping at him. Kakashi laughed like he hadn't laughed in years, then suddenly choked on air as he suddenly remembered what Ibiki had told him and disappeared in a whisper of very panicked smoke. 

Tsunade was not amused. 


	6. Lesson Six: Diplomacy

**Training Kakashi.**

_Lesson Six: Diplomacy._

A tiny ball of paper hit Ibiki's temple, bouncing off his skin soundlessly. He said nothing and merely continued to work in silence. Another ball flew through the office, hitting its intended target easily. Ibiki concentrated on the reports before him, trying to sort out missions– another hit, very close to his eye too, and Ibiki decided he had had enough; three hours under the attack were enough. He stood up and a rain of paper balls scattered to the floor, he turned to his left, where Midori was calmly rolling up another of her bullets. She put it in her open palm and then sent it flying with her finger. 

It hit Ibiki's chest. 

"Having fun?" 

"You're a bastard," she looked remarkably like a three-year old, "just… _bastard_." 

"Eh, yes?" Ibiki frowned. Well, it was a bit of an understandment that he _was_ a bastard. It was practically in his job description, the most important requirement. Midori had never really complained before. None of his staff had. 

"Just… _arg_, I'm not talking to you." 

"…you _are_ aware that you actually _are_, yes? Right this instant?" Ibiki wondered, briefly, if something was wrong with the water. 

"Har-har." 

Midori was sulking. _Sulking_. In his office. People never sulked in his office. Cry in agony, scream for mercy, ask for their mommy, sure. But not sulking. Never sulking. Ibiki wondered if this was a not-so-subtle sign from the gods that he needed to take a vacation. Preferably a long one. Away from interrogation rooms and noisy intelligence officers and overly erratic medic Nin that sulked in his office. 

He'd have to sign a tower of paperwork and gamble with Tsunade-sama, but it was doable. 

"What did I do now?" His bewildered tone earned him another glare and a scowl. 

He was torn between amusement and curiosity, because he really couldn't remember any offence that had been bad enough to bring this bout of childish behavior from someone he could usually count as a reliable, responsible, _mature_ adult. 

Most of the time. 

"You sent Kakashi on a mission," Midori said sullenly, terribly miffed and possibly contemplating retaliation involving something a bit more threatening than paper balls. 

Ibiki blinked. 

"Eh, no, I didn't," he quirked an eyebrow, schooling his features out of the amused expression by sheer habit, "Tsunade-sama, you know, our current _Hokage_, did. Very loudly and with a few threats involving unspeakable amounts of pain if he were to fail or be late again, matter of fact." 

"You sent Kakashi on a mission _without_ Iruka," she sniffed, _sniffed_; Ibiki wondered if he had fallen asleep on his late night shift again and this was just a twisted, morbid dream his psyche had cooked up just to piss him off, "do you have any idea of what that means?" 

"Kakashi didn't want to take him along, can't say I blame him, either," when she looked ready to reply, he added, snidely, "although sure, sending that man to fend off against his former students, maybe killing them, I don't know what Kakashi was thinking. Iruka would have been _delighted_." 

Silence. 

"Yeah, well…" Caught, Midori struggled to find the words, and then glared, "at least he wouldn't be mopping my apartment right now!" 

"I think you mean moping _in_ your apartment." 

"He's got a mop and a bucket of water and he's _cleaning_ it," Midori clarified quite acidly, "He's _mopping_ my apartment." 

Ibiki stared, tilting his head slightly to the side and screwing his mouth in an unreadable expression that made the scars twitch. Midori continued to sulk. A vacation was sounding better and better by the moment, his mind supplied easily. Somewhere safe and peaceful, like a scorpion-infested patch of desert near Hidden Sand. 

"…why?" 

"Because he's depressed!" Midori looked at Ibiki as if she were doubting his famous grasp on the human mind. "He's lonely and he misses Kakashi, he's utterly miserable." 

Maybe not Hidden Sand, but he heard the cells in Hidden Rock were particularly amicable towards stray Leafs. 

"So he's cleaning your apartment because he's depressed?" 

"Well, no," Midori shrugged, "he was doing nothing because he's depressed, so I told him to suck it up and do something useful. But that's not the point," she waved dismissingly, "the point is that he's missing Kakashi and it's your fault!" 

Ibiki had given up understanding women long ago – specifically, the very moment he met Anko for the first time – and this particularly trying specimen of womanhood was as far away from his understanding as it was humanly possible. She was a good medic Nin, one who had the restrains and the cold blood needed to calculate the treatment to maintain alive and not heal fully. One that didn't particularly minded to treat the prisoners that went through Ibiki – or worse, Anko herself – for interrogation and who never even quirked an eyebrow at the state of affairs in the office. 

But she was still a bloody child that could drive any sane man up a wall when she put her mind into it. 

Ibiki mourned his strict code of conduct and wondered if it would be really all that terrible to have a stack of alcohol hidden in his desk. God knew Tsunade-sama did. 

"Alright," Ibiki rubbed the bridge of his nose and felt an irritating pulse that herald a headache pushing against his left eye, "tell him to come here, I have a job for him." 

-- 

The Kazekage was due to arrive to Konoha and there was need for a squad to escort him. 

Iruka's absent mind directed his hands as they put the scroll into the S-ranked pile. He was half way through the next mission request when it hit him. His eyes widened as he reached for the precious scroll, rereading it a few times to make sure. The Kazekage. In Konoha. 

Oh dear. 

He hadn't been so sure when Midori had pretty much dragged him into Ibiki's office – a place Iruka really didn't want to visit all that often – especially after she had bossed him into cleaning her apartment, since she thought he was 'depressed'. Iruka would have liked to argue he didn't even know how to be depressed and while he had been quiet and contemplative the first days after Kakashi left on his mission, it was mostly due to the fact he was trying to figure out where he stood with the Copy Nin now. Of course that had been nearly a month ago and now Iruka was installed in the Mission Room, sorting out all manner of important papers and with a security clearance that most Jounins would never hope to get. 

Being the Third's favorite shougi opponent had its advantages, it seemed. 

It was a heavy workload, but apparently he needed it. Well, he'd always had an excess of free time, he thought wryly, and teaching in the Academy only stretched so far. After the third died, he no longer spent his afternoons playing shougi with the Hokage, commenting on the recent events. And he figured that at least now was doing something truly productive, instead of reorganizing his apartment every time he grew too bored with its layout. 

But back at the matter at hand, the Kazekage was coming to Konoha. The Kazekage. Iruka wondered who had been chosen, but he didn't know enough Sand Nins to do an educated guess, so he figured this was a diplomatic – very diplomatic, at that – way of showing trust and 'apologize' for the Orochimaru fiasco in the Chuunin exam nearly a year and a half ago. 

_Naruto's been gone nearly eight months now_, Iruka thought absently, sparing a warm smile for his former student and a plea to the heavens that his training with Jiraiya wouldn't completely turn the boy into a helpless pervert. A strong, rather unstoppable pervert, but a pervert nonetheless. 

Oh well. 

Now the matter was, who was he going to stick with the job of following a group of stern, stone-faced Sand Nins and their leader, and who wouldn't turn the whole thing into a bloody war zone. Sand Nins weren't the most popular thing in Konoha after the death of the Third, except around the group of Genin that had tried to retrieve Sasuke and had received support from the Sand Siblings. Iruka really hoped that they would come along the committee, because otherwise, things would be Bad and Tense. 

"Enter," Iruka intoned calmly as Takato, Ibiki's main intelligence man, slumped into the room, grinning lopsidedly like the carefree, lovable idiot he was. 

"Ibiki says you gotta sort this out," he dropped another tower of scrolls into Iruka's desk, "and he wants to you nominate the teams for the D and C missions." 

Oh yes, Iruka enjoyed this new job and Ibiki never hesitated to take advantage of the teacher's deep knowledge of his students. The whole incident with Naruto and the Chuunin exam had taught Iruka that his students could be pushed and that they actually grew up once they left his side, but the basic strengths and weaknesses that he'd perceived in the Academy rarely changed, thus he was the best suited to nominate them for missions they had the highest chances of completing successfully. 

"Alright," Iruka nodded, then smiled a bit tiredly, "Reiko's tonight?" 

"You bet, man, you bet," Takato's grin grew and he nodded enthusiastically, "booze and time to chill. Just like the medic Nin prescribed." 

Sharing a laugh, feeling like a part of the complex clockwork already, Iruka figured that he was quite lucky, even if he still hadn't figured out Kakashi's place in his life. 

Life was good, nevertheless. 

-- 

The Kazekage was in Konoha, but Iruka still didn't know who he was. Truthfully, he had avoided the knowledge, because certainly someone – anyone, really, who had a lower clearance than him, and that was _many_ people – would try to wrestle the information out of him. The head of Hidden Sand was to stay with them until the start of the Chuunin exams in a week and a half, and he would not reveal his face to the public eye in Konoha until then. Maybe. There was a lot of secrecy involving him and of course a lot of curiosity, which naturally mean that everyone was speculating and throwing wild guesses about it. So Iruka had merrily carried on with his work and avoided the name attached to the title like the plague. After all, no one that knew him, however marginally, would try to question him further after he looked at them and told them quite sincerely that he didn't know. 

When he explained his logic to Tsunade-sama, she had looked at him a bit oddly and asked him about Kakashi. 

Iruka didn't read Kakashi's team's reports either, so he told her quite sincerely that he didn't know. 

Tsunade laughed, offered sake – Iruka always declined – and then kicked him out of the office for at least a week, saying that way he would know even less about the Kazekage. His identity was to be kept secret for the time being, since apparently he was Too Important, so Iruka was glad to be back to his apartment every afternoon after Academy classes were over and his students were done with their daily pleas for him to give them extra lessons. Never in the history of Iruka's teaching carrier had a whole class _begged_ for extra work, but then again, this generation had seen not one, but two incredibly odd and uncommon situations in which it was established that Iruka Ruled. He'd kicked someone's ass, rather soundly at that, in front of them and he'd also caught the great Sharingan Kakashi off balance; that basically made him into their One True Hero and there was no shaking that. 

At the thought of Kakashi, Iruka's mood still darkened a little. 

The second day of his 'leave' from the Mission Office, Iruka found that he was getting antsy. He had the oddest urge to rearrange the furniture in his apartment into new, inventive ways and he couldn't really concentrate on grading papers. He'd taken to lessen the brunt of written examinations, because he didn't have the time to grade them now – and his students had fallen into line so perfectly, he really didn't need to punish them that much anymore – and now he had an empty apartment, a free afternoon and nothing to do. 

Five minutes later, he was walking up the mountain trail towards his favorite thinking spot and Not Thinking about Kakashi or the Kazekage or any other bothersome topic that could give him a headache. 

Iruka knew he was doomed to fail, but he tried, nevertheless. He always did. 

-- 

"Naruto is not in the village," a bored monotone interrupted Iruka's contemplations, startling him almost to the point he fell off the head of the Third's monument, "why?" 

He stood and turned around to face whoever had sneaked on him in a single, fluid movement – it had to be a Jounin to have gone undetected by Iruka's sharp senses – and froze when he caught sight of the impassive green eyes that bore onto him. Gaara of the Desert stood despondently in front of him, seemingly waiting for an answer that Iruka could not really formulate since he was too busy trying to set his breathing and heartbeat into a sensible rhythm and not get killed in the process. 

True, Naruto had prattled on and on about the great progress Gaara had made after their battle, and he and his siblings had even helped the Konoha's Genin while they hunted after Sasuke, but it was one thing to have your overly excited former student going on about the one-eighty the container of the one-tail had gone through and quite another to be face to face with the results of it. 

"Naruto is not in the village," Gaara repeated calmly, monotonously, when he realized Iruka wasn't answering him, "why?" 

"Oh, eh," Iruka wondered if he should be afraid, but he was more curious and shocked than anything, "he left the village a while ago." 

Gaara's expression turned sinister and rather scary, despite the fact not a single muscle in his face moved, and Iruka had a moment to realize how his words had sounded. _Smooth, Umino_, he told himself dryly, _real smooth._

"Not like that!" He yelped loudly, waving his arms as if to shield himself from an attack that wasn't coming, though Gaara's chakra seemed to thicken a little bit; "He's on a training trip, with one of the Sannin. He'll be back." _Eventually._

…_I hope_. 

"I see," a tiny frown marred Gaara's features, a cross between perplexity that Naruto wasn't available and maybe irritation because of it. 

Iruka really hoped it was mostly perplexity, because he was pretty sure he couldn't handle an irritated Gaara. 

He wasn't entirely sure _anyone_ could handle an irritated Gaara. 

"You don't fear Naruto," it was a statement, not a question, but it was laced with a hint of curiosity that made Iruka quirk an eyebrow. 

"Of course not," the teacher blurted out the answer without thinking; it was automatic and he couldn't stop it, but the notion was ridiculous. "He was my student and he's a good boy, there's no reason to fear him." 

Gaara seemed to be perplexed again, and the frown deepened somewhat. 

"Naruto has enough power to destroy Konoha, if he chooses to," the way Gaara said it, it sounded terrible, something to be afraid of, but Iruka could also read beneath the words what went unsaid: _so do I, and my people fear me for it._

"Well, yes, but he would never do such a thing," Iruka smiled reassuringly; that, too, was an automatic response and he didn't even think about it, "he loves Konoha and he will protect it from everything, even himself, if he has to." 

Gaara seemed to ponder his words, because his expression turned blank – and that was strange, because his face had remained still through out the exchange – and he favored Iruka with a piercing green stare. 

"You are his teacher, then," the redhead said after a long moment, "what's your name?" 

Iruka gave Gaara a fascinated stare for a moment. It's not every day that a boy who's nearly half your age comes up and asks you your name, more so when that boy is powerful enough to kill you with a flicker of his wrist. 

The Chuunin decided his days were getting stranger and stranger and wondered what that could possibly mean. 

"Umino Iruka," he answered eventually, feeling his name inadequate as it passed through his lips. 

There was something off about Gaara, though, something insane and something thoughtful, neither of which he could hope to understand. Gaara didn't present himself, but Iruka had expected that. It wasn't like he _needed_ to be introduced. Iruka took advantage of the long silence and studied the boy in front of him; from his violently colored hair to the kanji on his forehead to the gigantic gourd he always seemed to be carrying about. The was something that called to Iruka in the way Gaara contemplated his words, deep into his own thoughts, similar to the way the shunned blond boy in Iruka's class had called to him, once upon a time. 

Naruto wasn't the only shared acquaintance between them, Iruka knew in a moment; Loneliness was Gaara's companion as well. 

Silence was thick and it was slowly turning uncomfortable for Iruka. It wasn't that he couldn't stay quiet, because he could, but he felt there was too many things unsaid hanging around the deceptively frail-looking child before him, and it was in his own nature to try and lessen that burden, even if it was clear he had no way of doing so. 

"Kazekage-sama!" 

There was relief in the gasp as a Sand ANBU materialized behind Gaara. Two seconds later, three more masked shinobis were standing at a prudent distance behind the redhead, though Iruka felt their stares on him. It made his skin tingle somewhat. 

"Kazekage-sama," the first ANBU said anxiously, "we've been looking-" 

Gaara turned his head slowly, tearing his gaze away from Iruka and centering its intensity on the older man. 

"Silence." 

The order had the immediate effect to cut off the man and a tense anxiety settled in the air instead. Iruka had gone white. _Ka… Kazekage?_ And his eyes were getting round and large as well. 

"Tomorrow," Gaara said calmly, still not looking at him, "we will speak again, Umino Iruka, and you will tell me why you don't fear Naruto." 

It wasn't so much a request as an order and a threat, so Iruka nodded a bit dumbly. Gaara didn't see him, but he didn't seem to be expecting an answer either, because seconds later, he and his ANBU disappeared in a whisper of sand. Iruka stood there, on the head of the Third's monument and stared some more at the empty space before him. 

Kazekage. Gaara of the Desert was now Kazekage of Sunagakure. And Iruka had just spent about half an hour talking and being quiet next to him. Talking about _Naruto_. And he apparently had been appointed to do it again, tomorrow. 

He sat down on the hard rock because he felt he would fall down otherwise and, ever the diplomat, voiced his thoughts with as much coherency and eloquence as he could. 

_"Shit."_


	7. Lesson Seven: Duty

**Training Kakashi.**

_Lesson Seven: Duty._

"Way to get involved in politics, Iruka," Tsunade snorted as the Chuunin winced. "I just had the most interesting conversation with the head of Sand's ANBU, apparently they are under the impression you were attempting to kidnap their Kazekage."

_"What?!"_

"Calm down," the Hokage waved her hands soothingly, smiling indulgently at his wide-eyed expression, "I talked to them and explained in no uncertain terms the sheer ludicrousness of the notion." Iruka let out a breath he hadn't been aware he had been holding. "However…"

_Boy, here it comes_, Iruka winced mentally. After being summoned by the Hokage herself and waiting three hours to be received, Iruka had a fairly good idea of what the conversation would be about. He only hoped this hadn't shattered those precious alliances that Tsunade had worked to hard to preserve after Orochimaru's attack, because then Iruka was going to get close up and personal with Pain and Misery.

"However?" He had to thread carefully, or he would invoke Her Wrath and that was something Iruka really didn't want to contemplate.

"However, once it was established that you weren't trying to kidnap their Kazekage, but rather, that he approached you in a non-violent way, the Sand has requested you to cooperate with him," Tsunade seemed to be overly amused at the situation, "apparently their opinion of their Kazekage is that he's too unstable and erratic and they won't take responsibility for you if you irritate him." _Tell me something I don't know!_ "Which is why you're now Gaara's unofficial escort. If he approaches you, talk to him, answer his questions and try to make him feel comfortable."

There was a long, awkward silence.

"You know," Iruka said slowly, carefully, because he wasn't sure Tsunade wouldn't kill him for the remark, "you could give me a sword and I'll kill myself a lot faster." Pause. "And a lot less painfully."

The Hokage stared at him. Iruka stared at her. A cricket chirped, somewhere in the distance. The clock in the wall ticked slowly, agonizing over every second that went by. And then the voluptuous woman bursted out laughing hysterically.

Iruka blinked.

It started slowly, like a bubbling in Tsunade's chest, a chuckle or two, before she was thrown over her desk, slamming a fist against the sturdy wood. Iruka was vaguely worried about the integrity of the desk, though he was more worried about the sanity of the Hokage.

It wouldn't do if he _broke_ her.

"Ah, boy," Tsunade rubbed a stray tear off her eyes, still chuckling, "that's a sense of humor worthy of a true diplomat. You've never really thought about a carrier in the field? You'd be good…" She gathered her papers and scrolls and slumped them together in the center of the desk, smile fading as a more stern expression took over her face; this was Konoha's Hokage speaking. "Don't worry about what Gaara asks or wants; just try to keep him happy. He seems to have a habit of disappearing in the middle of meetings and leaving behind councilors and advisors talking to air, but if he's with you, his ANBU will stop breathing down my neck."

"But—" Iruka wanted to argue that he wasn't sure Gaara _had_ a happy setting.

"Your job is easy, Iruka," he didn't like her smile, it was shark-y and intimidating, "you go on with your life as usual, and merely, when Gaara decides he wants to talk to you, you talk with him. He's not going to kill you; he gave me his word that there would be no violence during his stay."

"But—" And what about his classes? His _students_?

"Think about it this way, Iruka," the blonde's mouth curved into a viper's smile, "eight days, at most, while we prepare the Chuunin exam and the Sand representatives finish building up their ulcers. If Gaara approached you, it means he didn't approach someone else. Someone with a worst temper or who doesn't know how to act around a volatile powerhouse like him.

"I'm not going to play babysitter to the Kazekage!"

"You will keep that blasted neurotic brat out of my hair, Umino Iruka, and that's an _order_."

Iruka came face to face with Tsunade's narrowed eyes as the silence stretched uncomfortably. He swallowed thickly.

"Yes, Hokage-sama."

--

Kakashi was having a bad day.

He turned a page on his book moodily and reflected that this was possibly one of the worst days of his life. Further inside the cave, Anko and Genma had a row as to whether starting a fire or not would be a wise idea, while Raidou finished patching up his wrist. They were wet and tired and bruised and not generally a happy sort.

Jounins in missions were hardly a cheerful lot, but this particular group seemed ready to snap.

"We need to eat and rest before we can move on," Anko glared hotly and made wild gesticulations, although her voice was hardly above a whisper.

"The light and the smoke will give us away," Genma argued back, voice just as soft, "we're close to them already, I say we catch a few hours of rest before he close in on them and finish this goddamn mission for once and for all."

Outside, the Land of Earth showed them its short but powerful rain season as a thunderstorm threatened to split the ground in two. Kakashi passed another page, concentrating on the details scattered in the narration to avoid the urge to strangle both of his teammates. _Mm, ballgags. I like ballgags. People can't talk with ballgags in their mouths._

"Raidou, a bit of support here!" Genma turned to the scarred man as he continued to bandage his injuries.

"I'm cold," came the plainitive whisper.

"See? He agrees with me!" Anko stomped her foot without making any noise and glared even more darkly at Genma.

"Ka—"

"—_and the curve of her back as it dipped at her hips excited him to the peak of vigour, leaving doubts and uncertainties behind; he was certain the heavenly creature that slowly, very slowly, opened up before him was nothing short of perfect._" The half lidded eye turned to the silent group as Kakashi finished his quote, quirking an eyebrow as it to dare them.

"…never mind."

Having made his point, Kakashi wondered how Iruka was fairing, before he crushed the thought with another forceful visual from his novel and continued to keep watch in peace.

--

There was an eyeball floating in front of Iruka's face. An _eyeball_. Made of _sand_. It caught him mid-lecture and his stunned silence, in turn, caused his students to stare at it with morbid fascination that only children with no self-preservation could contemplate. It seemed to blink, despite the fact it had no lid and Iruka very much doubted his owner knew _how_ to blink. A quick glance through the window revealed Gaara standing in the distance, as still as a statue in his perch on the far-off fence of the Academy grounds.

"Iruka-sensei?" Moegi raised her arm as the eyeball dissolved into thin air.

"Excuse me a moment," Iruka closed his book, irked, "finish your notes, I'll check them when I get back. I won't take long."

He left the room a bit more forcefully than usual, steps measured as he practiced the speech in his mind. Those could be his last words, so he wanted to say them right; but no one, _no one_, not even Gaara of the Desert would interrupt his classes. His classes were _sacred_.

"Iruka-sensei is acting really weird today," Udon mused somewhat groggily, "he didn't even bother to answer Moegi's question."

"Hm," Konohamaru said thoughtfully, and _plotted_.

--

Kakashi, Genma and Raidou stood by the sidelines as Anko sank her claws in their prisoner's mind with a terrifying ease. She was composed, at ease; her expression was calm but not obviously guarded as they knew her to be, her voice soft and almost comforting as she continued to apply each jutsu and pressure point carefully.

The man really didn't have a chance.

"It's like Ibiki," Genma muttered with a shudder, "only, you know, with breasts."

There was a long silence, followed by three violent shudders.

"Let's not imagine that ever again," Raidou said dully, as if half his brain had been burnt away by the mental image.

The prisoner screamed, gurgled and fainted.

"Yeah," Genma bit a bit on his stick, "I'll pretend I never did."

Kakashi nodded sagely in agreement; it still wasn't a very good day.

--

"I can't talk to you right now," Iruka said as calmly as he could, which wasn't much, since he was aggravated and somewhat annoyed, "I'm in the middle of class!"

Gaara looked at him impassively, expressionless face black as the green eyes fixed on him for a moment, before he swept his gaze around them.

"Not anymore," he said, and although the words would have been sardonic coming from anyone else, Gaara's tone made them factual, simple.

Iruka contemplated throwing a tantrum, but decided that was not going to help with the whole survival thing. He narrowed his eyes a little, then took a really deep breath. Right. This was Gaara of the Desert, the Kazekage, an emotionally unstable child with little to no social conditioning and, apparently, Iruka's responsibility.

Iruka wondered, briefly, where his quiet, simple life as a school teacher had gone to, before he sighed.

"Look, I can't talk, I have to finish my classes," he tried to make the words final, but they still came out reluctant, as if he were asking a favor instead of pointing out the obvious.

Gaara wasn't looking at him.

"You can't teach a class without students," the redhead said calmly, detachedly, and Iruka wondered if he had gone insane; then remembered who he was talking to and dismissed the issue entirely.

"You're the Kazekage of Hidden Sand; shouldn't you be in a meeting discussing something about the Chuunin exam?" _And certainly not giving me white hair before its due?_ Iruka most certainly did _not_ add, because he'd found himself rather taken with the whole process of breathing air as opposed to breathing sand, which was generally unpleasant and not a good idea.

"Meetings are boring since my advisors like to talk in circles," Gaara was still not looking at him and his expression hadn't changed yet, which only made his words far more disturbing in Iruka's opinion. "I dislike talking in circles."

"Eh…"

"I dislike repeating myself, as well," those luminescent green eyes bore on him intently, "you can't teach a class without students."

Iruka had the strangest suspicion that Gaara was raising an eyebrow at him without actually doing so.

"Well, of course I can't, but my students are waiting in the—" and then Iruka turned back to the building, which was what Gaara had been looking at in the first place, and noticed the band of children slowly making their way out as cautionously as they could. At the head of the expedition, he could recognize a very familiar set of goggles and his eyes narrowed to slits.

"_Konohamaru!_"

Gaara watched the brown haired Chuunin yell bloody murder as he ran after the children, hell and fury written all over his face and wondered why the man didn't _feel_ as angry as he seemed. The Kazekage watched the capture and the scolding that followed with vague interest, having decided that Iruka was not going to answer properly if he couldn't concentrate on the questions.

Gaara blinked slowly and then _hn_'ed, before disappearing into a whisper of sand.

--

"Moody bitch," Genma muttered good naturedly as Kakashi stomped away from their little camp and towards a rock where he could perch and read.

"I hear he's involved with Umino," Raidou gossiped promptly, now that they were, more or less, out of earshot. "They had a fight before Tsunade-sama herself shipped Kakashi away to avoid collateral damage."

And really, since Kakashi was reading, chances of him paying attention to their conversation were slim to none.

"Umino Iruka? Midori's Iruka?" Anko's eyes widened, "No way, she'd told me by now!"

Which was good, because it meant he had an excuse to indulge his laziness and _not_ kill them painfully. He tuned them out as best as he could and tried not to think about the litter of corpses they'd left behind as a token of their successful mission. They were teammates, after all, one didn't kill one's teammates unless one couldn't help it.

Kakashi passed another page to help himself.

--

"We lost the Kazekage," a tall, masked man bursted into the 'living room' of the quarters the Hokage had assigned for the Hidden Sand committee, looking torn between solid panic and shocked hilarity.

"You lost the Kazekage?" An advisor stood abruptly as everything in the room came to a screeching halt.

Everything, of course, being the advisor himself and the reports he'd been writing up to that point.

"We lost the Kazekage," the ANBU said again, going to sit on the couch and putting his head miserably between his hands.

"What's going on?" Temari asked, coming out of her room with her fan held tightly between her hands, alerted by the noise.

"They lost the Kazekage!" The advisor whisper-screamed at her, panicking.

"You lost the Kazekage?!" The blonde look ready to snap heads, appearing even more fearsome and dangerous than her younger brother. "Kankuro!"

Someone fell behind the second door of the corridor, and a small litany of swearwords followed the movement.

"We lost the Kazekage," the ANBU repeated miserably, sinking further and further into despair.

"What's going on?" The puppeteer asked irritably – he had been having one damned good dream – as he appeared into the room, face twisted into a scowl that did funny things to his face paint.

"They lost the Kazekage," Temari said indignantly, pointing to the ANBU that was contemplating suicide as a way to regain lost honor.

"They lost the Kazekage!" The advisor was turning a lovely ashen white color, with two bright spots of purple on his cheeks as his eyes widened and watered.

"We lost the Kazekage." The ANBU intoned pathetically.

"Yeah?" Kankuro snorted, "And then who the hell is that?"

Standing on the rail of the balcony, Gaara watched Konoha and cared none for the strange antics of his escorts.


	8. Lesson Eight: Evasiveness

**Training Kakashi.**

_Lesson Eight: Evasiveness._

Gaara liked oddities. He'd never had much of a grasp on what 'normal' meant, but he always found himself attracted to oddities. Things out of the normal pattern helped him find attackers before they could raise their weapons and his gaze was always attracted to the highest or the lowest dunes, the ones that broke with the monotony of the desert. He didn't empathize with oddities, because he wasn't capable of empathy, but they intrigued him, and he'd learned that oddities were much more interesting than normal things. Once you knew one thing that belonged to the norm, you knew pretty much everything within the norm – like those boring rambles of his advisors, he only had to listen to one to know what the rest were going to say – while an odd thing had to be studied closely, tossed and turned to all possible sides to be fully understood. Being unpredictable was part of being odd, and that, at least, kept Gaara entertained and away from more dangerous thoughts.

Umino Iruka was a big, walking oddity.

He was gentle, kind, and still commanded respect. He asked for things, but people still did what he wanted. He measured people with startling accuracy, yet expected the best of them. Even while he scolded his students, delivered punishment or his temper flared, he maintained himself stern, not violent. Actually, from all that Gaara had observed, he didn't seem an active fighter – he won all his battles with words, rather than with brute strength. He didn't hide his feelings, didn't speak in curt, short sentences that often felt choppy.

He was unlike any of Gaara's former caretakers and teachers, and he wondered, however briefly, if he was, perhaps, the major difference between Naruto and himself.

"They are doing it again."

Iruka didn't even bother to be surprised when Gaara appeared into his living room – though, he did wonder why everyone was suddenly popping into his until now peaceful living room – merely finished grading an exam before facing the scowling Kazekage.

Gaara was like Kakashi in that respect, they could transmit a surprising amount of emotion through a fairly expressionless face.

"If they ask a question and get an answer the first time, what is the point of asking the same question again?" Gaara looked puzzled in a way Iruka couldn't really point out in detail; his features were always half-way frozen into a mask of impassiveness.

"Hm, I see," Iruka stood up calmly, leaving the mess that was his desk for the time being and reaching for the wide windows, "have you tried to tell them not to, though?"

Gaara seemed to ponder on the suggestion; three days, and Iruka was adapting nicely into this new routine. At least Gaara didn't appear randomly during class, like he'd done the first day, and he didn't completely hide his chakra from Iruka, so he didn't almost-but-not-quite give him a heart attack anymore. Now they walked through the streets and trailed up to the Hokage monument, talking or being quiet, and at least Iruka had the feeling Gaara enjoyed it.

He really hoped he did, because his questions and statements had the effect of tilting Iruka's mildly idyllic life one-eighty more often than not.

"What good is it to complain about something?" Gaara followed Iruka out of the room and into the sunlight as they landed into the roof of the building across the street. Two jumps more and they were in the gardens around the Hokage tower. "Conflicts are meant to be solved, but I can't exactly kill them for being redundant."

"I would hope not," Iruka muttered wryly, then added, "but you are the important to them now, you're their leader. If the way they work doesn't help you with your own job, then maybe you should speak up and try to change it."

Gaara said nothing.

"And you really should stop running away like that," Iruka ventured somewhat nervously, "it worries them."

"_Hm,_" Gaara watched the road ahead, steps calm and content, "so basically, you think I am a bad Kazekage."

Iruka stumbled, barely catching himself before he fell face first against the stone walkway.

"_What!?_ No!" He spluttered and fumbled with his words, looking torn between panic and outrage as Gaara studied his expressions carefully. "No, no, I mean… ah, someone your age and… all the changes, all that _responsibility_, I think… I… I…" He took a deep breath, shaking his head to clear his thoughts. "You're not a bad Kazekage," he said with his most stern and serious voice.

Gaara was doing the whole 'I'm raising an eyebrow at you without moving a muscle' thing again, Iruka just _knew_ it. The redhead continued walking up the path, leaving the Chuunin to gather his breath, his dignity and possibly his wit before he caught up with him. The silence made Iruka hyperaware of the sound of sand moving slightly within the gourd, sliding back and forth with each step Gaara took.

"Tell me," the boy said thoughtfully after a very long silence, when they were almost at the top of the mountain, "tell me what would make me a good Kazekage."

--

"Yo," Kakashi said cheerfully as he appeared into Iruka's kitchen.

Iruka yelped, juggled with the teacups in his hands for a moment, and then turned to glare at his unannounced visitor. Kakashi looked… rough around the edges. Dirty and run down, sweat and dust gathering in the corners of his clothes and with a large smudge of mud on his mask. Iruka's glare turned a bit less severe and more worried. There wasn't any sign of injury on him, but that didn't mean he was _fine_. He looked tired and about to collapse.

"Did you just come back from that mission?" Iruka asked incredously, staring a bit more when Kakashi nodded earnestly. "Right this instant?" Kakashi nodded again. Iruka muttered something vaguely threatening before his right arm shot in the general direction of the bathroom. "Shower."

"But—"

"_Shower_."

"I—"

"Sho-wer. _Now_." Iruka pushed Kakashi into the living room, screwing his nose a bit at the stench practically _radiating_ off the Jounin.

Kakashi came face to face with Gaara. He blinked. Gaara remained impassive.

"You… seem to have one Kazekage in your living room," the Copy Nin informed the Chuunin, voice slightly strained, "just thought you'd like to know."

"Oh, Gaara!" Iruka came around Kakashi to greet the silent Kazekage – and almost caused the Jounin to fall back when his support disappeared – who seemed very interested in the argument going on before him. He gave Iruka an unreadable look and didn't reply to his greeting, but Iruka was expecting that. "I, eh…"

"I'll be back later." Gaara said slowly as he turned to leave, Kakashi was thankful; he really didn't want to faint with the leader of another Hidden Village looking.

"Wait!" The redhead paused, looking at Iruka again, "Wait… I can't be the only person in Konoha you can talk with. Maybe you could find someone else, while I…" He waved in Kakashi's general direction, then added, a bit frustrated, "you don't have to be alone."

"I have ties with you," the Kazekage said simply, then added, without scorn, "you're distracted, I'll go get back to work."

He disappeared in a flurry of sand. Kakashi noted the worry in the teacher's face, wondered about the presence of the Kazekage in the apartment, wondered about _his_ presence in the apartment and then tried to sneak away at the picture that formed in his mind. Iruka's hand shot out and grabbed his vest, securing him in place. His eyes narrowed, exasperation winning over concern as his other hand pointed to the bathroom.

"You will get a shower, you will eat and you will tell me why the hell you're _here_," Iruka's temper was getting the best of him, and guiltily, Kakashi found himself uncomfortably excited by the sight. "_Go._"

Kakashi hovered for a moment, then nodded sharply and made his way to the bathroom, torn between bruised dignity at being ordered around and acrid resignation that he was going to fuck things up. He was exceedingly good at that.

Iruka sighed and started making tea.

--

_You don't have to be alone_.

Oh, yes, Umino Iruka was odd. In a strangely refreshing way. Gaara finished signing the tower of forms in front of him and slipped away from the room again. None of the ANBU's stationed outside his door seemed to notice and neither did his brother, lying on the couch of the small living room as he stared at the ceiling.

_And you really should stop running away like that, it worries them._

Gaara reappeared into his room, sighed, and then walked out of the room, alerting everyone of his presence. Everyone straightened, expecting orders. The Kazekage looked at them blankly for a moment, then started walking to the doorway.

"I will go for a walk," the expression on their faces, particularly Kankuro's, was unexpected, but Gaara finished his thought calmly, his monotone echoing in the room without a hint of threat. "I'd like to be left alone now."

Really, was it so surprising that he was taking the time to tell them where he was going? Maybe Umino was right and he wasn't being a good Kazekage that way. And after a moment, Gaara reasoned quite emotionlessly that all those resources and time they spent searching frantically for him whenever he felt like walking around could be used for something more productive.

_Hn_.

Naruto wasn't in the village yet, though, and the Chuunin exams would take place in three days. And Umino was currently entangled with someone else – Gaara would need to ask about that later, he'd never seen the teacher acting like that before. He didn't need the company, he was just fine alone, but he had a strange restless feeling in his very bones and he wanted… _something_.

But could he talk to anyone? There was no one in the village he had ties or bonds with. No one that knew him beyond the monster from the Chuunin exams. Except… well, surely even _him_ was scared of the Sand. Not that the idea of people fearing him disturbed Gaara in the slightless; for him, that was the natural state of things. Yet, he wanted to create bonds with his people, and he wanted to form strong connections with other humans; it was a strange need that had lain dormant within him until Naruto had awakened it with all the subtlety he possessed.

_Hn._ It seemed there was another question he would need to ask.

Gaara leaped into the late afternoon sky, thoughts slightly unfocused.

--

Behind the plastic curtain – at which Kakashi had grinned, considering the rather cute dolphin motif on it – the Copy Nin stood immobile under the pounding of the shower, letting the hot water remove grime and soreness out of his body. The tiles reflected and amplified the booming sounds of a thousand drops splashing against his body and the floor and themselves. He almost didn't hear the knock.

"Come in," he watched Iruka's shadow from behind the curtain as he left a bundle on top of the toilet and stole his dirty clothes. "Do you—"

His sardonic teasing was cut short when the door slammed shut as Iruka scrambled away like a mouse.

Well.

_This isn't going to work_, Kakashi thought despondently as he scrubbed his skin hard enough to bring a healthy flush to it. It never worked, anyway. Kakashi was bad with relationships, bad with friends and bad with people in general. He had friends _now_, but it had taken a long way and a long string of misunderstandings to get it right. Friends like Genma and Anko and Raidou, who got the point he wasn't trying to be rude or depressing or a drama queen; he really just enjoyed reading more than balancing precariously around unspoken issues. Friends like Gai and Ibiki, who threaded carefully around him, measuring up the sore spots and never, ever stepping on them twice.

Really, he liked him being him. He liked to sit off-side a bit, reading porn in broad daylight and he especially liked himself when he pointed out all that was wrong in the world in a sarcastic, superior tone. He liked his quirks, his love for tea and his inability to prepare anything else but tea in a kitchen. He liked connecting the dots in wallpaper of his bathroom and he enjoyed finding random patterns in everything around him. He liked the mask and the headband that hid away his face; he liked the mystery and the privacy.

It was also very unfortunate that he happened to like Iruka as well.

_This is _not_ going to work._

Oh, Kakashi was no fool; he hated wasting time disguising feelings and trying to find a way around them. He wanted Iruka. He liked him and he wanted him. If he were to work a bit more on those emotions, he could probably bloom them into something deeper, more consistent. But he was not going to, because that was just going to end badly. Iruka didn't deserve a lazy bastard of a Jounin that read porn all the time and who regularly set his kitchen on fire. Iruka deserved to have someone centered, stable; someone who would make him feel cherished and appreciated. Kakashi could barely open his mouth without spilling a river of sarcasm and ironies that stung more often than not. He couldn't even stop now; it was just the way he was.

And true, he liked Iruka, but he didn't like him more than he liked himself; Kakashi had no intentions of changing for the sake of someone else. It had taken him too many years to grow comfortable under his own skin; he was not going to throw that out of the window for the sake of someone else, not even Iruka.

_This is so not going to work_.

He stepped out of the shower and took one of the fluffy white towels, drying himself just as furiously as he had scrubbed. On top of the toilet, Iruka had left him a set of spare clothes; the pants were a bit short on the legs but the shirt was baggy on him. Iruka was shorter, but his back was broader than Kakashi's… and the Jounin promptly killed that train of thought, because that was part of the things he really didn't need to think about at the moment. His forehead protector was still on the sink, but the teacher had also left him a clean black mask; it seemed old in an unused sort of way and Kakashi figured it was mostly because Iruka had no reason to hide his face.

He slid the headband over the sharingan, but left the mask alone as he finished dressing.

_Damnit_.

"Iruka?"

The Chuunin looked up from where he was setting the tea, then froze the moment he realized Kakashi was, most certainly, not wearing the mask. Much to the Jounin's chagring, he didn't stare at him, memorizing every detail, nor did he gape with his mouth slack. Iruka simply blushed faintly and turned sharply to face the other way.

Kakashi would have been able to deal with ogling or staring. He would have felt better about denying everything and cutting ties if he could, later on, shield behind the fact Iruka didn't respect his privacy. And now he couldn't really peg the gesture behind disgust, because that blush was most certainly _not_ caused by it.

_Fuck. Me._ He thought sullenly, and then made his way slowly up to the teacher.

"I left you a mask in the bathroom, I—" Iruka was still not looking at him; kneeling where he'd been serving the tea, he looked rather small and approachable.

Kakashi hated him a little.

"I know," the silver haired Jounin walked slowly, then knelt behind the teacher as his hands found themselves resting on the shoulders that tensed minutely at the contact. It was funny, because Kakashi didn't remember putting them there. "Iruka, look at me."

He had a marvelous speech planned out. It was nothing like Gai's speeches, which complicated everything and were redundant and boring. No, Kakashi had made a quick list of all the things that weren't going to work and he had figured a way to convey them all so that Iruka would understand and see how this was Not Wise. And then, the blasted, thrice damned bastard _looked_ at him.

When Iruka turned, Kakashi's arms found themselves still at his shoulders, almost pulling him closer. And the blush was darkening slowly, almost to the point the scar disappeared under it. And his eyes were half lidded and his mouth slightly opened – ready to say something stupid which would spoil the mood, of course, but since that would actually be helpful for Kakashi, the bastard kept _silent_. And his _eyes_, goddamnit, his eyes would be the death of him. There was wanting there, _longing_. No one longed for Kakashi, it was simply not done!

"I…" the Copy Nin wondered when he'd started to slide forward, inching closer, "this isn't gonna work."

Iruka made a small sound in the back of his throat, but Kakashi's words sounded more like they were directed at himself, and really, before he could clarify, he was kissing Iruka.

Kissing.

Iruka.

He was _kissing_ him.

In the category of "Things not going according to plan", this had just won the prize.

It wasn't even that nice of a kiss, and Kakashi had a long list of kisses to his name. It was sloppy, tentative, almost _reluctant_ – although all that reluctance was his fault – and it seemed as if Iruka was half expecting him to kill him for it. And his hands! His traitorous, dastardly hands! They were moving up and down Iruka's shoulders and neck, fingers caressing the stiff muscles delicately, teasingly. And his lips tingled as they battled his mind to deepen it. The conflict ended when the mouth against his opened of its own volition and rougher, larger hands caught the shirt he was wearing. Iruka leaned in a bit more purposely, and then Kakashi truly and really_hated_ him.

Because this, _this_ was one bloody good kiss, sensuous without being overzealous, lips and tongue and teeth that moved subtly without pushing too far or staying away. It was perfect.

Kakashi was doomed.

"No," he pulled back, looking away, "no, this isn't going to work."

"Kakashi—"

"_No_," he didn't look at Iruka, because he knew that if he did, he was not going to leave at all.

He managed to stand back and gave Iruka one clearly pained look before he disappeared into a cloud of smoke. The teacher sat there, contemplating what just had happened well after his tea had gone cold.


	9. Lesson Nine: Rivalry

**Training Kakashi.**

_Lesson Nine: Rivalry._

"Kakashi! My greatest and only rival!" 

Kakashi groaned and buried himself deeper into his covers, trying to hide away from the booming voice. Gai wasn't particularly taken aback by the sight of his 'greatest and only rival' hiding under the covers; he merely walked towards the bed and yanked the sheets off Kakashi's curling body as if it were the most natural thing in the world. 

The Copy Nin sat up and _glared_. 

Gai beamed at him. 

"Raise and shine, my dear friend! I have come to challenge you, but you cannot compete on an empty stomach!" The dark haired Jounin turned towards the largely unused kitchenette on the corner of Kakashi's one-room apartment. "I will even make you breakfast to ensure you are ready to face me!" 

_Kill me now, please_. 

Realizing, morosely, that Gai was certainly _not_ above taking him into the shower – or _giving_ him the shower, if it came down to it – Kakashi slowly slid off the bed and reached for his clothes, before dragging his body to the bathroom. Gai was _humming_. Terribly off key and terribly cheerful as he made ado with whatever Kakashi still had in his fridge, wide awake and _happy_, despite the fact it was barely six in the morning. The certain knowledge that Gai had probably been up since four and had already done his 'light' early morning training did nothing to improve the Jounin's right down murderous mood. 

Kakashi glared at the proud Green Beast and slammed the door as hard as he could, just because. 

When he came out, just wearing pants and with a towel at his shoulders, his hair falling down under the weight of water, Gai put a plate of fresh fruit – which Kakashi definitely hadn't had around the apartment – and a obscenely large glass of a bizarre looking milkshake before him. The Copy Nin took a tentative sip of it, then glared at the still-beaming oaf when his taste buds didn't fall off his tongue. Sulking, Kakashi set to eat while Gai accompanied him, still humming that horrible song. 

It wasn't fair. 

Gai could be up and running, perfectly coherent, well before sunrise, and he certainly didn't set his own kitchen on fire twice a week. He wasn't the greatest cook ever, of course – that was actually, as strange as it seemed, Anko. Although her habit of talking to food as she cooked ('die, you bastard, die!') made others wary of trying out her creations – but he made things _edible_. Kakashi felt lucky when the _dogs_ dared to taste anything he put together. And Gai wasn't nursing a moral hang-over from hell that was threatening to drive him insane. He hadn't spent half the night dreaming about terribly obnoxious school teachers that just couldn't be a bit _less_ perfect, could they? 

"So," Kakashi asked after Gai served him a nice, steaming cup of coffee that actually tasted like coffee, "what's it today?" 

Gai's eyes lit up like fireworks. 

-- 

"Rock Lee," Gaara said thoughtfully when they reached the top of the Hokage monument. 

"Hm?" Iruka turned to face his companion, expression slightly distant. 

He'd been like that all day, Gaara noted curiously. Deep within his thoughts, contemplating something no one else could possibly know. Quiet and unenthusiastic. Not that the Chuunin was ever enthusiastic around _him_, but at least he tried to… well, Gaara wasn't exactly sure what he was trying to do, but he was always _talking_. He talked far more than anyone else in Gaara's presence, but he didn't talk senselessly. Today, however, Iruka seemed tired and almost… _sad_? 

The Kazekage gave up trying to figure out emotions and decided today's conversation was not going to progress well, so the questions about the incident could wait. There was, however, something else in his mind. 

"Rock Lee, I want to talk with him." Iruka blinked when Gaara's mouth turned very slightly upwards into a queer-looking lopsided smirk. It was so small, many wouldn't have seen it, but Iruka just _knew_ it was there. It was scary. "Unless you wish to explain what happened last night. I'm curious about that as well." 

Iruka looked at him for a very long moment, then, much to Gaara's amusement, color started to rise in his face and he coughed uncomfortably. 

"Let's go find Lee." 

-- 

Kakashi was staring at the landscape. This, in and of itself was not unusual. The fact Gai had just royally kicked his ass in a fight and that he was still hanging upside down from the tree where he'd landed, was. 

But it was the fact he wasn't reading Come Come Paradise that tipped off Gai something was wrong. 

"Kakashi?" Said Jounin blinked and stared at the upside down head of his rival and friend distractedly. It only made Gai's expression more and more worried. "Where's your book?" 

"Oh," the Copy Nin palmed his pockets and his vest for a second, then shrugged. "I think I left it at home." 

Gai's horrified expression made Kakashi realize he was about to experience something Not Nice; something akin to Agony and Pain. Indeed, after a long, stunned silence, his friend reached out and crushed him tightly into an upside-down hug, burying his face into that horrible green shirt. 

Kakashi squeaked with all the wounded dignity of a mighty guinea pig and flailed a little. 

"Oh! How long have I waited for this day to come!" Suddenly, all the blood in Kakashi's body saw fit to pummel his head and it _hurt_. Gai squeezed him a bit more. "Oh, oh! My heart weeps with the joy that happiness has finally touched you, _you_, my one and only rival!" 

"Gai!" 

Gai started to _cry_. 

"How fortunate, how _perfect_!" One of the strong arms holding him in place shot out to point to the sky dramatically. Kakashi kicked air helplessly, since the hold on him had not weakened in the slightless. "Touched by true love! How wonderful is the power of the selfless, pure emotion! It steals away my—" Gai blinked when he noticed his friend wasn't moving. "Kakashi?" 

Kakashi gurgled incoherently, eye unfocused and face slightly flush, since he was asphyxiating and all. 

"Oh, how beautiful is Love!" 

Gai crushed him again. Kakashi whimpered. 

-- 

"What's that?" 

It took Iruka a moment to realize Gaara was no longer at his side, but rather, the Kazekage was standing in the middle of the street, gourd and all, and staring at something to his right. Following his gaze, the teacher caught sight of one of his students playing with a puppy. He smiled. 

"That's Shizuka," his eyes filled with a certain warmth Gaara couldn't really understand, "she's from my younger class." 

"I know what a child is," the tone wasn't peevish, but Iruka could almost feel the unspoken '_duh_' in the air. "What is what she's playing with?" 

"A dog… you know, a puppy," this got him another Look. Iruka tried again, "it's a pet." 

"Pet." Gaara didn't sound particularly convinced. 

"Iruka-sensei!" Shizuka caught sight of him and gave a squeal of pure delight, running to meet him, the brown dog tucked in her arms. "Good afternoon, Iruka-sensei! Look, this is Maki!" She thrust the yipping canine forward as if to 'show-and-tell', beaming proudly. "Momma got him just for me!" 

A spared glance to the side proved Gaara was watching the girl with a very small frown, but he had, mercifully, passed off undetected by her excited senses, which were entirely focused on her teacher. Gaara's expression was a mix of curiosity – dark one at that, which Iruka had just recently learned to recognize – and vague irritation that their conversation had been so rudely interrupted. An irritated Gaara did not bode well for anyone and that brought Iruka out of his grim contemplations and back to full alert in an instant. 

"That's very nice, Shizuka, but I'm afraid we're in a hurry," _and I really don't want to test that whole 'no-violence' promise today, and certainly not with a six year old._

"Oh, okay!" Her smile wavered a little, but then widened to reveal a missing tooth as she nodded, "I will see you tomorrow, Iruka-sensei!" 

"Yes, Shizuka, have a nice afternoon." He relaxed minutely when the girl ran back to her house, talking animatedly to her pet. 

Five minutes later, when the training grounds were already appearing in the distance, Gaara broke his thoughtful silence. His voice, a smooth monotone Iruka was slowly becoming used to, dragged the Chuunin back from his own mind and thoughts on how life was Not Fair. 

And how he was most assuredly _not_ thinking about Kakashi, his face or the fact the goddamn _bastard_ could kiss. Oh, no sir, not at all. 

"What purpose does a pet serve?" The Kazekage was, as usual, staring blankly ahead, not emotion showing whatsoever in his face. 

"Well," Iruka shrugged, "they make people happy. You care about them and they keep you company." 

"_Hm_," the redhead would have probably said more, but there was an incredulous cry coming from ahead, and Iruka braced himself. 

"_Gaara?!_" 

Sure enough, there was Lee standing in the middle of a rather bruised training ground – Genma was going to have _kittens_ about it – staring at Gaara as if he were a product of his imagination. Iruka wondered if the kid was going to faint, then remembered _whose_ student he was and dismissed the notion. When he was soundly ignored, the teacher stepped back into the shadow of the trees and decided not to make his own presence too noticeable unless it was necessary. Lee had never been his student, and Iruka really didn't feel all that comfortable around him. 

Besides, Lee reminded him of Gai, who reminded him of Kaka—of someone unpleasant, whom he was _not_ thinking about. At all. 

"Is that really you?" The black haired Genin ran to meet the redhead, eyes bright and smiling wide, completely oblivious to the Chuunin. 

Of all the ways Gaara had thought this meeting would go, this was certainly not what he had been expecting. He was slightly taken aback when Lee stepped uncomfortably close to him. Certainly closer than most people would dare to. 

"I fail to see how I could possibly _not_ be really me," the Kazekage said monotonously, a ghost of bemusement in his words. 

"It _is_ you!" Lee laughed in delight, something that didn't happen often in Gaara's presence and then grinned conspiratorially. "Are you here for the Chuunin exams? Let me tell you, I'm not going easy on you this time! I've been training very hard under Gai-sensei; I'm much stronger than before!" 

Gaara blinked very slowly, not sure what he was supposed to answer and already doubting this had been a good idea after all. Lee didn't seem to be expecting an answer, though, because he was chuckling contently and smiling widely. Wryly, the Kazekage felt his own facial muscles twitch a bit in discomfort at the idea of twisting quite that way. He wasn't even entirely sure it was humanely possible to smile that widely. 

"Oh, did you come here to train?" The excitement started to fade a little under Gaara's rather cold attitude, but Lee still seemed pretty upbeat for someone talking to the unemotional Kazekage. The redhead's face remained blank. "I know! Let's spar!" 

"Spar?" Iruka tensed minutely as the dreadful frown appeared on Gaara's forehead and thought that perhaps it would be wise to announce himself before disaster happened. "I came here to see you." 

Silence. 

Lee stared at Gaara through wide eyes, his mouth half opened in the middle of a word. Iruka wondered if it would be terribly cowardly of him to flee before the diplomatic equivalent of Apocalypse started. Gaara just stood there, being his imperturbable, passive self. 

"It's true then!" An even _wider_ smile split Lee's face as he _beamed_. At Gaara. "Oh, you must have felt it too! I had hoped…" 

"Um, Lee…" Iruka concluded that yes, it would be terribly cowardly, not to mention that comforting Gai wasn't going to be _nice_, so he approached the over-excited Genin carefully while he composed his epitaph in his mind: _Rock Lee, short life, memorable explosion._ "I don't think…" 

"Gaara! Surely… yes!" There were sparkles gathering around the black haired boy, "You, from now on, you are my one and greatest rival!" 

"Lee!" A panicked pitch assaulted Chuunin's voice as he tried to figure the easiest way to pry the unsuspecting boy from the Kazekage's wrath. 

Gaara was staring at Lee with morbid fascination, as if he had discovered a new and strange specimen of an unknown species. 

"I… am?" The redhead said tentatively, tilting his head minutely to the side. 

"Oh, yes," Lee nodded eagerly, pointing to the sky and speaking in his most earnest voice, "this everlasting, unbreakable bond that blooms from the depths of our friendship! Gaara, I challenge you!" 

The vessel of the One-Tail really didn't know how having almost killed Lee not once, but twice made up for a friendship, much less how it could create an 'everlasting, unbreakable bond'. And he really didn't know how a challenge fit into that whole picture, either. He gave Lee a stare that said as much. Lee didn't particularly seem to notice. 

"Boys!" Iruka raised his voice to the scolding, classroom tone, and Lee finally realized he was there. Gaara didn't bother to look at him and continued to study the Genin, trying to find the head injury that was surely hiding somewhere in that dark haired head. 

"Iruka-sensei!" Lee transferred his beaming from Gaara to Iruka. "Did you hear? Gaara accepted to be my rival! Gai-sensei will be so proud!" 

"That's… er, _nice_, Lee," Iruka wondered what terrible sin he commited in his past life to be repaying it like this. 

"I did?" Gaara was frowning again, but his voice was so soft and Lee was so excited that his bemused question went unanswered. 

Iruka realized he wasn't atoning for a sin; he reached the conclusion he'd probably been the equivalent of Orochimaru in his past life. The sheer amount of bad karma required to deserve a day like this was nothing short of that. He had prayed for a miracle. Instead, Gai and Kakashi entered the training grounds, deep in their own heated debate. 

"—because I'm _not_," Kakashi, visibly peeved, snapped back at his still-grinning companion, but Gai was suddenly more interested in Lee's expression than convincing his friend to embrace Happiness. 

Besides, Kakashi could be stubborn as a mule, but True Love was not going to be thwarted so easily! 

"Lee!" Gai gave his student a reproaching look, completely ignoring Gaara and Iruka, "The Chuunin exams are less than two days away! You should be training and preparing for what's coming! Even the Power of Youth is worthless without Effort and Hard Work!" 

"Yes, Gai-sensei!" Lee saluted sharply. Two seconds later, the smile broke through. "But something wonderful has happened!" 

"I had not realized friendship could drive people just as crazy as loneliness," Gaara mused quietly, watching blandly as Lee retold the incident – or his warped version of the incident – to his teacher. 

"Neither had I, to tell the truth," Iruka agreed whole heartedly. 

"I should probably leave now," the Kazekage said calmly, just as both Taijutsu masters burst out in manly tears of joy. 

Iruka nodded, although the redhead was already gone, and instead centered his attention at the hugging pair. Teacher and student wept, yelping and crying out loudly, one answering the other and forming one big mass of green spandex and orange legwarmers that made the Chuunin's head hurt. 

"Don't," Kakashi was suddenly at his side, and Iruka blinked, facing the Jounin, "don't try to understand it. You get used to it, you learn to ignore it, but you never really understand it." 

"Ah," Iruka sighed and suddenly awkwardness fell on them. "I, eh, washed your clothes. You know, from last night." 

"Yeah," Kakashi jerked his head stiffly, "thanks." 

"So…?" 

"Yeah." 

They stood in the middle of the maimed training ground for what seemed eternity, tense and wary. They never noticed when Gai dragged Lee away, despite his heated protests about his unfinished training and the missing Gaara, promising to explain things when he grew up some more. Eventually, Iruka snapped out of it and shook his head. Kakashi mirrored the motion and they left, each heading to a different direction, without another word. 

This was good, because when Genma arrived, scarce minutes later, his scream of outrage could be heard all the way to the Hokage monument. 

-- 

_It's just a door._

Iruka glared at it as if it were responsible for everything bad and evil that had ever happened to him. The door remained as impassive as wooden things like to be. Shifting his weight from one foot to the other, he wondered what exactly he was doing here in the first place. Kakashi didn't want anything to do with him, that much was clear. The previous night had been a mistake that they were both regretting already and the best course of action would be, of course, to leave things be and go back to their own, chaotic little lives. 

That was the wise course of action, the reasonable thing to do. 

Iruka didn't want to be reasonable or wise. 

He _liked_ Kakashi, much to his chagrin. He liked the porn-addicted, sarcastic son of a bitch. He liked his twisted sense of humor, even if it never failed to bring a blush to his features. He liked what little he had been able to glimpse at while the Jounin stayed in his home. He liked having to strain himself to read beneath the words and translate the scarce expressions in that face. 

…he'd _really_ liked having that mouth pressing demandingly on his, among other things. 

Kakashi had been fascinating from a distance, cloaked in mystery and framed by harsh words; Iruka could admit as much. But from up close, unraveling the first threads of that complicated knot, Kakashi was _attractive_. The Chuunin never really thought himself to be of the vain types that went after looks only, but he certainly wasn't _blind_. He, as much as it embarrassed him, _wanted_ Kakashi. Something in the sheer complexity that was the great Sharingan Kakashi called out to him, he couldn't deny it. 

But if it was not going to work – as the Jounin had so eloquently put it – Iruka wanted _something_. Acknowledgement, maybe. Friendship, even. He didn't want to come out as needy or weak, and he would accept it if Kakashi really didn't want anything between them like the mature, centered adult he was, but he didn't want to push the Copy Nin out of his life, or vice versa. 

Above all, he wanted to know _why_. 

Iruka knocked the door before he could talk himself out of it all together and took a deep breath when it opened, holding the bundle of cloth close to his chest. 

Kakashi stared at him and he forgot what he was going to say. 

"You, ah, forgot this," Iruka thrust the clean garments right into the Jounin's chest, who held them without really noticing, still staring at him with an unreadable expression. "I… good night, Kakashi-sensei." 

The teacher bowed slightly and turned to leave. 

_This isn't gonna work._ Kakashi looked down at his hands and the carefully folded clothes in them, then up as Iruka walked purposely down the corridor to the stairs. 

"Iruka," the Chuunin stopped, turning slowly to find Kakashi stepping back and looking much more comfortable and sure than _he_ felt, "Gai left some take out this morning, want dinner?" 

_Not at all._

It took Iruka a moment to react, but then he nodded slowly. The Copy Nin relaxed minutely at the sight. 

"Yeah," the Chuunin smiled tentatively; it was the cutest thing Kakashi had ever seen. "Sure." 

_Oh, what the hell._


	10. Lesson Ten: Endurance

******Training Kakashi.**

_Lesson Ten: Endurance._

Kobayashi Midori was not having a good day. Really, was it much to ask for the goddamn idiot to just _die_? Or, conversely, couldn't he just stop and take a fucking _rest_? Running an aimless chase was not how she had envisioned the last forty two hours of her life and it was quickly degenerating her mood into something murderous and impatient. 

Ibiki-sama had explicitly told her _not_ to kill the brat, but oh, wasn't she tempted to feign ignorance about right now… 

She was a _medic_. She loved being buried under tons of paperwork, doing nasty, vaguely unethical things to her patients. She lived to hear Takato rant about nonsense, to see Ibiki-sama's scars twitch whenever something went awry in the office – which, with their crew, was often – and to goad Iruka into buy her dinner twice a month. 

She certainly didn't live to run through a forest with a band of children and a mildly neurotic Jounin in search of a target that by all means, should be someone _else's_. 

"See anything yet, kid?" The girl startled a bit at the sound of Midori's voice, and the Chuunin's lip curled upwards so very slightly when the pale, nearly white eyes turned to her. 

"No, Kobayashi-san," Hinata whispered as they ran in through the forest at high speed; ahead of them, the boys – whose names Midori couldn't be bothered to remember and were thus reduced to Queer-Dog-Brat and Queerer-Bug-Brat – led their little party through a seemingly senseless trail. "He's still under the cloak, but Akamaru's got his scent, we'll get him." 

_I want to get him before I'm old and wrinkly_, Midori snarled mentally, but most certainly did not voice out loud. She'd learned that this girl was insecure and rather nervous, and sending her into a mental break-down because her companion turned out to be snider than she could stomach would not be good. At all. It would probably make Ibiki-sama… _hissy_, and a hissy Ibiki-sama was something definitely filed under Not-Nice and Trauma-Inducing. 

Midori sighed and pushed on. Distantly, she wondered if it would take much to convince Iruka that she deserved to be bought dinner – hopefully something that didn't involve ramen – but that trail of thought was cut short by a panicked scream, an explosion of chakra and a goddamn _hive_ of… things that were buzzing loud enough to give her a headache. 

"He got them!" Kurenai yelled over as they caught up with the boys. 

Hinata's eyes widened as she watched Kiba writhing on the floor, screaming, while Shino stood there, frozen. Akamaru barked and tried to make his partner react, but they were both deep within the jutsu and the illusion was slowly tearing them apart. The Hyuga heiress tried to interfere, but her sensei grabbed her back. 

"No, wait," the Jounin narrowed her eyes, "we were supposed to escort Midori and track her target, the rest is her work." 

"But—" 

"Nice trick, kid," Midori narrowed her eyes as she walked towards their opponent; he couldn't be older than sixteen, "but it ain't gonna work. Now, why don't you stop being a brat and come quietly? I've had really bad few days, don't make it worse." 

The boy snarled and tried to capture her into the genjutsu as well, but his attempts failed repeatedly, until he lost control over Kiba and Shino, and, exasperated, threw a kunai at her. Hinata flinched when it hit the Chuunin on the shoulder, barely above her heart, and blood began to flow. Midori bowed her head and reached a hand to the handle. 

"That… was not smart." 

She was smiling when she ripped it off, without so much as a wince. Akamaru began shaking and retreating away from the malevolent aura that spread around her. 

"Stand back," Kurenai said curtly as she gathered her team close, "or you'll get killed." 

"But she—" 

"She's the specialist Ibiki-sama sent for this mission," Kurenai guided them back under the shelter of the forest, away from the clearing, "one of _that_ bloodthirsty clan. I'm more worried about that boy, now. Ibiki said he wanted him alive, I hope she remembers that." 

With a screech of fury, the Chuunin launched herself at the boy, wielding her short swords and looking fearsome. On the sidelines, staring in morbid fascination, Kiba and Shino contemplated a display of unnecessary violence and very un-Zen attitudes that prompted them to closely examine everything they had known about women, fights and women fighting. Hinata turned her head away and pretended the gurgling screams were just a really, really weird bird singing its strange mating song. Kurenai developed a new found respect for Ibiki's henchmen. 

"Ata, girl," Kurenai mused dryly as the medic Nin fell on their prey with all the viciousness of a feral animal. 

The poor kid had no chance. 

"Shino?" Kiba said in a strangely squeaky voice, Akamaru curling behind him fearfully, "I think I'm gay now." 

"Yeah," the pale boy shivered very slightly, looking vaguely sick, "me too." 

Much snarling, slashing, cursing, screaming and blood later, Midori emerged from the melee dragging the unresisting body of a sixteen year old boy who had been stabbed enough times with swords, kunai and needles that he could be passed off as a pincushion. And he had also been treated, coincidentally, against blood loss by three well placed needles to his chakra nodes. 

"Move," a very pissed off medic Nin snapped as she passed them by, seemingly uncaring about the fact she was bleeding to death herself, "and be _quiet_." 

Team eight decided, using that unique pseudo-telepathy that only Genin-teammates could develop, that following the Chuunin from a prudent distance was the wisest course of action. A prudent distance of ten miles, perhaps. 

It wasn't like they could lose her, either, the blood trail was quite blatantly obvious. 

Ibiki's expression as they dropped the near-corpse in his office, scarce hours later, was something to be remembered. The fact it ended in a shouting match between a very disgruntled female and an utterly baffled Jounin caused a lot of Ibiki's staff to reevaluate their goals in life. 

The fact it ended in a shouting match about the state of the prisoner's _genitals_ was what made most flee, though. 

"You _castrated_ him?" Ibiki stared at the bloody, sweaty, dirty, bristling woman before him and thoughts of that elusive vacation in a desert island came to taunt him again. 

"It's not like he's going to need it after you're done with him!" Midori was tired. Midori was filthy. Midori was craving caffeine and her bed. "He's a traitor, gonna die anyway." 

Midori was not nice. 

"But you _castrated_ him!" Ibiki seemed to be having a wee bit of a problem making his brain work _past_ that particular piece of information. 

"Boss," she took a really, really deep breath, "I'm not a field worker. Remember that little extra clause in my contract where you gave me your word you would never, ever send me on missions outside the village? You broke that. And I've just spent nearly two days and two nights in the company of a passive-aggressive woman that likes to hum at every goddamn chance and a girl that has little to no self-esteem and who kept looking at me as if I were going to eat her or something. Not to mention a pair of freaky brats that have enough goddamn time in their hands to spent six goddamn hours discussing the fine difference between 'milk and chocolate' and 'chocolate and milk'." She leaned in across Ibiki's desk, eyes narrowed, "Quite frankly, I'm not made for outside operations. I don't _like_ outside operations. I probably need to go to anger management and I'll have a day discussing this... _incident_ with my best friend, who'll probably be so horrified he'll scream like a girl and run to hide behind his bastard of Jounin boyfriend. _Bite me_." 

"Who else was I supposed to send? Your clan's bloodline limit made you the only one with an actual chance to capture him _alive_," Ibiki sneered, and enjoyed a little sadistic pleasure when she flinched, "and I had honestly expected you to show more self-control." 

"I brought him back alive!" 

"Agonizing is the proper term, actually." 

"I _know_ agonizing, trust me, and that ain't it!" 

"Well, could have fooled me!" 

"_Children_." Tsunade raised an eyebrow at the irritated Ibiki and the seething Midori. They never saw her enter the office. "A day off, Midori, to rest and control the bloodlust properly. Ibiki, get that boy some treatment and leave him alone for the night. Tomorrow we'll set up the proper interrogation, but I want you all sane and calm. The Chuunin exams are too close for something like this to cause uproar. Am I clear?" 

"Yes, Hokage-sama." 

"Yes, Hokage-sama." 

Tsunade glared at them for good measure, then nodded and left the room almost haughtily. 

"You know," Midori started almost sheepishly, "if it's any consolation, I really, really didn't mean to, you know... do _that_." 

"Go," Ibiki pointed to the door, feeling a strange, desperate craving for something stronger than sake, "_please_." 

And to think, he still had to prepare a Chuunin examination… 

-- 

"Why am I here?" 

Kakashi made an inquisitive sound as Iruka poked his noodles thoughtfully. Dinner had been a very strange affair so far. Kakashi was regretting the impulse a bit more each second that went past and the awkwardness was starting to feel intoxicating. The windows in front of them offered a pleasant view of Konoha and the Hokage monument, as well as the night sky and the stars that were slowly appearing one by one. Watching sunset and the stars as they bloomed in the sky was one of Kakashi's favorite pastimes and one of the main reasons he'd stuck with the messy, tiny apartment despite the fact the plumbing was horrible and the wooden floors creaked at night. 

"Because there's no way in hell I can eat all this by myself?" The Copy Nin waved his chopsticks for emphasis, motioning to the tower of food Gai had brought him. 

Really, if he didn't know better, he would have thought Gai was trying to _fatten him up_. But the notion was ludicrous enough and Kakashi dismissed it along with the mental image of a mother hen Gai, clucking at him to eat properly and train harder. 

"Really," Iruka slid his gaze at his for a second, then turned back to staring at the landscape. 

There was a small pause. 

"You know, I'm not going to kill you if you look at my face," Kakashi was a little mystified by the sudden raise of color on the tanned cheeks, "I mean, kinda a bit too late for that." 

"Kill me? No," the Chuunin's voice held a tint of bitterness that brought the Jounin out of his contemplations of just how red could that face get, "run away, _again_? Yes." 

Silence. 

"That was… a bit too callous, wasn't it?" Kakashi winced when Iruka took a mouthful of noodles and glared darkly at him as he munched on them. "Cruel, too." 

"Yes, of course, my bad," the teacher looked torn between exasperation and anger; Kakashi found himself actually debating the possibility of an actual, honest to god apology. "Because dropping into my house, my _life_, without so much as a bloody warning, turn it glaringly upside down, then _kiss me_ and run away, that, by no means, was callous. _Or_ cruel." 

_Brilliant, Hatake, simply brilliant._ He'd gone through all that trouble to avoid _this_. He'd kept away and he'd been snide and unapproachable and distant, all in hopes he'd remain away from people and that people would remain away. Kakashi had friends, a handful of them with whom he competed and chatted and even ate on occasion. He even agreed to let Gai drag him to Anko's once every six months or so to a Jounin gathering, where they bitched and complained and whined about everything and nothing and acted like anything but the Jounin they were. They would joke around and be silly and even play a rather violent and scary version of tag, complete with jutsus and minor injuries. They had _fun_. But most importantly, Kakashi knew he never hurt his friends. Or maybe he did, but he truly tried not to, and they were all used to him by now. They never asked and he never answered, and everything was left at friendly banter. 

But Kakashi had hurt Iruka, and that stung. 

He didn't like romantic relationships. He just… wasn't made for them. Oh, that's not to say he didn't feel _attraction_. Or that he'd never followed the impulse. He'd had his flings, one-night deals with close friends; a friendly roll around the bed that was satisfying and that left no sour morning-afters. He'd even had that horrible, horrible Incident with Gai all those years ago, when he'd gotten so terribly drunk while they were celebrating Gai's ascent into the ANBU and which they never ever talked about because Kakashi felt like letting earth swallow him whole whenever he thought about it. Friendship and sex he was quite adept at, he could mix and twist them and _enjoy_ them, but he certainly never tried relationships properly. Those were complicated and tended to degenerate rapidly and leave a sad string of bruised egos and hurt feelings in their wake. 

Every morning, standing quietly before the memorial, he repeated his vow to Obito's memory, that he wouldn't hurt those close to him again. 

Kakashi protected those he held dear. He fought for them and put them at the top of his priorities. Gai could drive him up a wall some times, with the whole unrelenting challenge thing, and Genma certainly had a special ability to make his liver boil with a few well placed comments; but when it came down to it, Kakashi was more than willing to give up everything he had, absolutely _everything_, if it meant sparing his friends any pain. 

Somehow, during a rather claustrophobic week locked up in Iruka's apartment, the Chuunin had joined that list; sneaking past his defenses and making himself quite at home in Kakashi's subconscious as Something To Protect. And if protecting him meant walking away and sever all ties, Kakashi was willing to do that… only it quite didn't work as he'd planned. 

He wondered if he had a really big Karma Debt that ensured all of his plans didn't flow accordingly. 

"I…" Kakashi sounded small, Iruka didn't like it. "I really didn't mean to." 

"I know you didn't mean to," the teacher sighed, tiredly, "I just don't know _what_." 

"Huh?" 

"The kiss or the running away, Kakashi," Iruka lowered his chopsticks and rubbed the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache coming on, "I suggest you pick one and _stick_ to it." 

Another distressing silence, before a rather bold pair of arms sneaked around Iruka's neck. He blinked a bit – he _really_ didn't see Kakashi move – when he found himself reclining against a solid body that felt reassuring even if by all means it should have made him feel outraged. 

"So you're asking me to either kiss you or leave?" And that face – the face so _few_ have seen, truly seen – pressed against his neck, the words soft puffs of airs that were deliciously taunting against the oddly sensible skin there. "That's pretty _bold_ of you, Umino-sensei; it means you wouldn't really mind the kiss." 

"You know?" Iruka smirked, an odd sight indeed, and concentrated his gaze to the horizon, rather than the strange sensations that were making his face hot and flushed, "I can stand the mask and the secrets and the pathological need for mystery. I can stand the sarcasm. I can stand your bloody dogs and the bloody fur in everything I own. I can even stand your goddamn porn and your frenetic compulsion to read it in broad daylight." He glared at the landscape, pissed off exasperation coloring his voice. "But it's the lies I can't fucking deal with." 

A hand reached for Iruka's hair, upsetting the pony tail, before his head was yanked back rather forcefully, but before he could complain, he was being soundly kissed and he found himself lying back on the wooden floor with one very enthusiastic Jounin set on kissing the life out of him. 

Iruka moaned and opened his mouth, his own hands clenching on the thing within their reach. 

"That was quite possibly the sweetest thing I've ever been told," mismatched eyes peered down at him, narrowed and oh so _there_. 

And Iruka laughed, a bubbling sound that came from deep within his throat and expanded over his body, before he dodged a rather insistent attempt to resume kissing. Kakashi glared when the laughter continued and the kissing _didn't_. 

"Now who's running away?" He came very close to sulking when Iruka rolled them around and crouched away from him. 

"I'm not running away," the Chuunin informed him calmly, amusement still visible in his features, "I'm procrastinating, since I have class to teach tomorrow, at _seven_." 

"Procrastinating?" Kakashi seemed to perk up a bit at that. 

"I'd thought you were familiar with the term," Iruka stood up, brushed invisible lint from his clothes and tried – in vain – to fix his ponytail. "Dinner was… nice, Kakashi. But I'll see you later." 

For the second time in the evening, he didn't see Kakashi move, at least until he had an arm against the door, holding it close, and his face – _unmasked, open face_ – was staring him down. 

"I… I can't promise you I won't run away," it was an earnest, true statement; doubtful and somewhat apprehensive and it melted Iruka just a little, "again, I mean." 

"I know that," Iruka smiled, a tad bit cheekily, though the blush ruined the effect, "which is why I'll have to start training so I can catch up with you." 

Kakashi watched him leave, disappearing into the night without a care, and didn't bother to contemplate their half eaten dinner or the fact they hadn't even made it to the tea. He was rather busy trying to classify the strange emotions moving within him and whether or not they came from the fact he now, apparently, had a boyfriend to call his. 

He wondered how long before Gai found out and decided to speech him to death about love and happiness and all that… _Gai-ness_. 

-- 

Some time around two in the morning, there was a puff in his bedroom. 

"Iruka?" 

He rolled off his bed, kunai in hand and body posed for attack. By the window, light cast strange shadows over Midori, but the bloodstained clothes and her pathetic, pitiful stare said quite enough. He forgot all about his complicated love life and pulled the petite woman close, uncaring of the blood or the stench of _fear_ clinging to her. When she broke down, crying like a child, Iruka knew she had been sent away to a mission and her bloodline limit had been used; Midori only cried when she lost control, and she only lost control when the bloodlust got the better of her and the humans she usually saw as things to heal became things to kill. 

The Kobayashi clan was immune to all but the most advanced genjutsu. They had come to Konoha from Hidden Mist, generations ago, and had brought their terrifying bloodlust with them. They could not stop a battle once they started, they could not stop fighting until they won or died. They were the ultimate warriors that lived short, spontaneous lives and who fought bravely to their last breath. 

Midori was not cut to be one of them. She could be cruel and sadistic, but she couldn't tap into the bloodline limit without shattering a little and Iruka hated seeing one of his friends suffering so much. He hated Ibiki a little, too, because no one else would have convinced the usually quirky Chuunin to actually go into a killing spree. 

"I'm sorry," she said after a long moment, still clinging to him and sniffing loudly. 

"It's okay," he patted her back and evaluated his chances to go and brew a cup of tea. 

"No, really, I _am_ sorry," Midori grinned; it was messy and snotty and it made her face seem awkward, "If you should be in bed with someone tonight, it should be with Kakashi, not your neurotic neighbor, who's got nothing better to do than being a bloody drama queen." 

Iruka laughed, disentangled himself from her and stifled a yawn. 

"Go take a shower, I'll brew tea." 

"Chamomile?" She looked oddly young when she asked things almost hopefully. 

"Sure." 

His long night wasn't going to end any time soon, by the looks of it. Iruka didn't mind. 


	11. Lessson Eleven: Specialty

**Training Kakashi.**

_Lesson Eleven: Specialty._

"You're pathetic."

"Absolutely pathetic."

"So pathetic you make puppies look fierce."

"It's embarrassing _us_, please stop now."

"I'm all set to claw my eyes off; anyone wants me to do theirs before I do mine, though?"

"Please, please stop it. Gai can sparkle and get away with it. You're just _scary_."

"_Freakishly_ scary."

"Snap _out_ of it, Hatake, or we're revoking the blood oath!"

Kakashi sighed. He'd been sighing for good two hours since Iruka left, doing nothing but lying in bed and contemplating his ceiling. His Ninken were starting to get a little antsy at the sight of their owner and master doing a disturbingly convincing impersonation of a school girl with a crush the size of Wind's desert. The downside of intelligent dogs capable of speech, Kakashi mused distractedly, before he rolled on his futon to give his back to the irritated dogs. There was silence, then the shuffle of tiny paws he'd come to recognize as Pakkun and then…

"_Fuck!_"

Kakashi shot up, standing on a leg and holding the other up as the pug sank his tiny, _sharp_ teeth on it with obstinate determination. Trying to shake him off only managed to make the wound ache more and the rest of the dogs began a chorus of barks, laughter and howls that had the poor sod living in the apartment below his hitting the ceiling with a broom.

Most shinobi kept their summons away from them when they weren't needed, but Kakashi actually _liked_ his dogs. They were more than just weapons to track and attack; he'd carefully picked up each of them while they were still pups, trained them and taught them everything they needed to know. He knew each had quirks and tastes and strange personality disorders that just _fit_ with his. The Ninken were used to staying in the house when they weren't needed. They cluttered Kakashi's tiny apartment and left their scent and shedding on everything he owned. They kept him company when he was tired after a mission and bemoaned his poor attempts at cooking.

Kakashi loved his dogs dearly, the closest companions he had ever had, and the ones that knew basically everything there was to know, because he kept no secrets from them.

It didn't mean, however, that he was above getting pissed at them, because he was. Oh boy, he _was_.

"Go _away_, ungrateful mutts!" Kakashi roared angrily as the pug finally dislodged himself from his ankle; he pointed to the open window with a glare of pure irritation, "_now!_"

The bloody fur balls had the nerve to snicker and laugh as they ran out of the apartment.

--

Iruka watched Midori snuggle down under his quilt – which, if he remembered correctly, she'd given him in the first place – and nodded to himself when she fell asleep before her head hit the pillow. It was… _early_, actually; a glance to the clock proved it was merely an hour and a half before he was due to wake up – he snorted a bit – and then decided that sleep was actually out of the question. With a defeated sigh, he opened the windows of the living room, set a small training mattress on the floor and sank down into his favorite meditation stance.

He had plenty to meditate about.

He concentrated on his own chakra flow, releasing the knots one by one until he lost himself within his mind. Kakashi, Midori, Gaara, about everything that had gone awry with his life in the past six weeks swirled before his mind eye. He was alert to the background though, like any good shinobi would be, ready to detect a threat should it present itself, despite the depths he was exploring.

The eight dogs sitting around him, watching him with a strange, keen interest didn't present a threat, so he didn't notice when they came, or when they left, seemingly having found whatever they'd been looking for.

By the time Iruka came back to his senses and began preparing for the day, they were long gone, but the faint scent of _dog_ remained. He didn't give it much thought.

--

Shinobi were trained to survive up to thirty-eight hours without sleep and just enough supplies. Iruka took the students that were about to graduate to a week long camping trip in which he trained them and kept them awake most of the time, to teach them a lesson on survival. It was a harsh lesson disguised as a game – indeed, one of the most looked-forward to in the Academy – but the principle stood there. Shinobi had to be functional even if they couldn't sleep eight hours and eat three times a day. _Eat now,_ Iruka's mother used to tell him with an amused, wolfish grin, _'cause you don't know if you'll get to eat tonight_. Of course, she never actually left him without dinner, but the knowledge was there.

Iruka actually had a fairly high endurance, all things considered; for someone who spent most of his time teaching or grading and who very rarely went on missions; he was listed as being capable of full functionality up to fifty-five hours without sleep.

Full functionality, of course, being a smooth euphemism for lethally-cranky and snappishly-efficient.

His students cowered all morning. Iruka was too hung up on caffeine and too busy preparing the speech he was going to launch at Ibiki's face to notice, or care. One had to plan ahead to his dying moment, after all. Few men actually knew, when, how and by what means they were going to die.

It was, admittedly a fairly suicidal idea. One simply did not stand up to the ANBU head of Torture and Interrogation, but it irked Iruka in ways he couldn't really explain. He knew the list of things Midori would not do, even if Ibiki asked her, was small, nearly non-existent. Of the few items included, betrayal to Konoha and cleaning the office ranked high in it. And Iruka knew Ibiki knew. Midori's official title was Head Medic Nin of the Torture and Interrogation Department. But she couldn't be anything else, when there were no other medic Nin under Ibiki. No one else could put up with the sardonic, often terrifying man.

After they'd found him bleeding to death under a tree, consoling Naruto and making vain promises of not dying, Midori had stormed in. She promptly dispatched everyone else with a glare potent enough to melt steel and spent the next sixteen hours patching him up. All the while scolding him for being an idiot and an imprudent, thoughtless bastard. And then, she spent a week exhausted in her bed because her chakra levels were so low. At the end of it, Iruka had feared _she_ would be the one to die from the aftermath.

_Ah, well_, he thought resignedly, _what are friends for?_

"Konohamaru," his voice was sickly sweet, the sort of tone his students had come to fear and have nightmares about, "don't even _think_ about it."

The boy froze, contemplated his options for a long moment, then lowered the makeshift slingshot and sat back, quietly. The class murmured for a second, before they sat in silence.

Iruka continued his class peacefully.

--

"He's blocking it," Anko kicked a nearby chair and sent it flying against the wall of Tsunade's office. She was pissed. Well beyond pissed, actually. "Fucking little shit's fifteen years old and he's _blocking me_. Kobayashi pulled a whole damn number on him, and he's fucking blocking me. _Me_."

The Hokage seemed a lot less perturbed than her; she merely folded her arms and leaned on her desk.

"Do you even know how he's doing it?" The Slug Sannin looked tired. "Anything we can work from?"

"He's in agony. _In agony_," Anko sank on the other chair, seemingly a breath away from actually start tearing at her hair, "Midori very nearly killed him. His chakra levels are laughable. He can barely move."

"He's a genjutsu specialist," Ibiki rumbled, not moving an inch from where he was comfortably leaning against the wall. "A darned good one. He managed to avoid capture by Kakashi's team and now he's blocking our attacks merely on instinct. He has the information we need, the preliminary interrogation revealed as much, but now he's conscious enough to avoid us. And he's avoiding us like the plague."

"Then what do you suggest," Tsunade leveled him with a quirked eyebrow and a mildly impatient look, "shall I cancel the exam, for the safety of the Daimyo and the Council members that will be present?"

"I suggest, with all due respect, Hokage-sama," Ibiki sneered, "that we call upon _our_ genjutsu specialist, before we take such desperate measures. He might be a little bit rusty, but he's still the best. And we happen to have a sharingan in Konoha again. _And_ he knows the brat."

Anko gaped at him. Tsunade frowned. Silence was tense and heavy while she considered his words.

"I trust you to know what you're doing, Ibiki," her eyes were sharp, vibrant, "and I trust you to not bite off more than you can chew. Dismissed."

--

"Yo, Gaara!" Kankuro let his voice echo in the seemingly empty apartment that cranky, loud woman of a Hokage had given the Sand committee for the duration of their stay. There was a rustle somewhere in the flat, and then a whisper of sand as an eyeball formed in front of him. Kankuro, almost used to it by now, jerked his head to the side, "you've got a guest."

He said it in a little bewildered tone, because even in Hidden Sand, Gaara didn't have 'guests'. He had people sent over by other villages or Jounin and ANBU reporting, but no one that went over to just… visit him. Maybe it was his own morbid curiosity what had allowed the strange kid inside; Kankuro wanted his brother to have this at least.

_This_ meaning, of course, Rock Lee and his most earnest expression as he followed Gaara's brother and bowed politely to each and every Sand Nin he encountered.

Temari was going to have a day laughing when she came back and heard about it.

They found Gaara at the backyard garden of their apartment building, which had been revamped into what the untrained eye would see as a rather pacific Zen sand garden, but which anyone who knew the Kazekage enough could see it as the death trap it was. Gaara himself was sitting atop a rock – Kankuro didn't really want to know where the rock had come from – holding something in his hands and facing away from them. The gourd was gone, dissolved into sand that moved almost soothingly in waves around the redhead.

Kankuro knew his brother hated being startled, so he opened his mouth to say something sensible and smart and which hopefully wouldn't get him killed. Lee bounced right into the sand, splashing it as if it were water and bellowed: "Gaara, I challenge you!"

The sand stilled.

Kankuro went through a litany of very appropriate thoughts in his mind – _shitshitshitshitSHITfuckityfuckityFUCK_ – and tried to think up an excuse to that freaking scary woman these people called Hokage, so as to why one of her Genin had ended up sand-coffin'd.

Gaara turned to face them, tilting his head back slightly. Something green and scale-y scrambled into the folds of his clothing; without the ever-present gourd, he looked small, almost… _approachable._

Kankuro nearly shat his pants when he saw Gaara give the tiniest of smiles.

"Okay."

He was still spluttering and staring long after the sand had gathered back into the gourd and Gaara and Lee had left.

--

"Hatake."

Kakashi looked up from where he'd been busy rereading his very first Come Come book; he'd been feeling oddly nostalgic of the late. Konoha's deadliest ANBU looked down at him with a very wide, vaguely unpleasant smile.

"Yo," Kakashi said, because it was what he always said.

"So tell me," Ibiki smirked; it was not a pleasant sight, "really, how well do you actually know Umino Iruka?"

"I fail to see how that's any of your business," the Copy Nin deadpanned easily, just the barest hint of threat in his voice.

"Oh, cut him some slack, boss," Genma appeared next to Ibiki, grinning lopsidedly around his senbon. He gave Kakashi two thumbs up behind the scarred man's back.

"Weren't you supposed to fetch Umino?" Ibiki said irritably, because Genma had this nasty habit of speaking his mind at the most inappropriate times possible and that in turn made Ibiki's liver curl up a little each time he did it.

"Yeah, he ain't in the Academy."

"What do you want with Iruka?" Kakashi's drawl was the most uninterested thing in the whole, wide world.

It also made Genma raise both eyebrows and Ibiki give Kakashi a measuring stare.

"You know where he lives," it wasn't a question, "I'll tell you while we get there."

--

Someone was knocking at his door. Iruka and Midori blinked; he, because it was the first time someone actually _bothered_ to knock in about forever, she, well, because it was a reflex. Iruka smiled kindly and pat her knee, then stood up and walked to the front door, leaving a bewildered Chuunin back in his bedroom.

"What can I—"

He opened the door and came face to face with Morino Ibiki. Behind him, Genma and Kakashi waited; the former looking carefree, the latter scowling. The was a second of tense silence, interrupted only by the sharp intake of breath and the shuffling of feet that proved Midori had gone back to hide under the covers – sadly more literally than figuratively speaking.

Iruka saw red for a moment and forgot all about his carefully, painstakingly planned out speech.

"_Bastard!_" Before anyone could react, the usually passive, patient, _nice_ teacher had thrown a fist against Ibiki's face.

Genma's senbon hit the ground as Ibiki actually stumbled back, holding his bloodied nose.

"You _fucking_ bastard!" Iruka's hands shot onto the coat and he drove his whole weight to slam the Jounin against the opposite wall. "You… you… fucking… _arg!_"

Kakashi stood there, thunderstruck, gaping behind the mask.

Genma began hyperventilating.

"Are you quite done now?" Ibiki calmly raised an eyebrow.

"Fuck _no_," Iruka slammed him against the wall again, and this time a bit of the plaster managed to come off, "Just… _no_."

"Well, that's a blasted shame, 'cause I am," with all the non-challance he possessed, the Jounin grabbed Iruka's wrists and rather gently shoved him off his person. "Now, wait here, children; I gather she's still inside."

"What—" Iruka started shaking, "the hell you're going!"

"To retrieve my medic," Ibiki said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world; then he added dryly, "really don't want to go find a new one, retraining one would be a bitch now."

"But—" the scarred man waltzed into his apartment and slammed the door on his face when he tried to follow him. "That… that… _bastard!_ The _nerve_! The very _nerve_!"

"You… you…" Genma paled, waving his hands around a bit, "you decked Morino Ibiki a right hook." His voice dropped into an awed whisper. "Morino. Ibiki. You _hit_ him!"

"And I'm not nearly done about it!" The Chuunin added fervently, eyes flashing with the promise of revenge.

"Shit, Hatake, how the hell you _fuck_ this… this… _thing_?"

Iruka would have turned to rant and glare – he wasn't really in the right mindset to produce a blush now, besides his cheeks were flaming already with all the indignation his body could produce – in pure outrage, but then Kakashi flickered his finger at Genma's forehead, glaring and not particularly amused.

"Shut up, we're not fucking," he paused, though, to give the rather alluring image of a truly and well pissed off Iruka a barely concealed leer, "_yet_."

The glare transferred to him, but Kakashi fancied it was a tiny bit less scary, which wasn't much, really, but which was something still.

Fifteen minutes later, Ibiki walked out, his nose fixed, and with a mouse-looking Chuunin at his heels. Midori sent Iruka a shy, apologic smile. The teacher merely scowled and glared darkly at Ibiki's back. Kakashi fell on step with him, stealing a glance here and there and generally looking very out of his element. He certainly had never expected Iruka to do _that_, and now he had to reevaluate everything he'd known about the Chuunin. Genma closed up their little party, staring at the ground and mumbling nonsense; he stole a glimpse of the teacher here and there, but that was it.

They went to the roof of the building, rather than the street and then they were soaring through the rooftops at breakneck speed, submerged into deep silence. If you paid close attention, though, you could hear Iruka's teeth cracking a bit under the strain of constant grinding.

--

The prisoner was locked up in an interrogation look with a one-way mirror and Tsunade, Ibiki, Genma, Anko, Midori and Kakashi stood behind it while Iruka steadied his nerves and went inside. Kakashi's sharingan was peering into the room, watching everything run smoothly. He wanted to ask a few things, mainly, what the hell was Iruka supposed to do against a brat that seemingly couldn't be interrogated by Ibiki's finest, or why was he needed anyways, but the Hokage was frowning – never a good sign – and so was Anko – _definitely_ not a good sign – so Kakashi shoved his questions back in his mind and _watched_.

Later, he'd sit with Iruka and ask, and he was sure the man would tell him. His perception of him might have changed, but Kakashi knew in his gut that Iruka remained the same.

--

"Hello, Ichiro."

Iruka walked slowly into the room, closing the door quietly. All anger and fury had been drained off his face, leaving behind only tired resignation. The boy was tied up to the chair, bandaged enough to pass off for a mummy and still bleeding. The scent of dried blood made Iruka's nose twitch slightly, but he merely walked to the chair across the table and sat in front of his former student.

"Iruka-sensei," the boy croaked softly, something sardonic lacing his voice; he looked terribly tired, "I didn't tell them and I won't tell you. It's useless."

"I know, Ichiro, I know," Iruka tried to smile, though it came out as a grimace, "they are going to execute you, Ichiro, as soon as I walk out of this room. But I'm not here to question you, I merely wanted to talk to you… a sentimental teacher wishing farewell to his beloved former student."

"Your _traitor_ of a former student, you mean," behind the bandages around his face, the single visible brown eye glinted with acrid amusement.

Iruka took a deep breath.

"Yes, Ichiro," he nodded sadly, "my beloved former student is a traitor now." There was a long silence, "but why? Not whom or where or how, Ichiro. Just why?"

--

"Son of a—"

Behind the mirror, everyone turned to Kakashi as Kakashi quickly reevaluated – for the third time that day – everything he knew about Iruka. His sharingan was itching as it tried to follow all the different chakra pathways that had been spread around the room, all flowing steadily from within Iruka and slowly inching their way into the boy.

"Can you see anything?" Tsunade asked curiously, face grim.

"I… I can't count them," the Copy Nin muttered in awe, "I can't count the layers in his jutsu. There's just… too many. Couple of hundred, at least. Maybe even a thousand."

"Makes sense," Ibiki said calmly, "his father could put up almost three thousand and three hundred," he ran his eyes over Iruka's disappointed looking face, "but while he's not as skilled in that respect, Iruka has sure become a fine actor."

Kakashi, disturbed, agreed.

--

"It's the Whore's fault," Ichiro said after a long silence, "it's because of her I left, _all_ of us left." When Iruka didn't answer, he added, "That simpleton of a whore the council named Hokage. When she took command, we knew Konoha had fallen truly low."

"Some would say the Fifth was very well fitted for her post," Iruka, ever the diplomat, said tentatively.

"She's a disgrace to this village! She's… _fuck_, Iruka-sensei," there was a sneer somewhere in there, buried underneath the snarl and the bandages, "who the hell thought putting up a woman as the head of the village was a good idea? Who the hell thought she could stand on equal ground to Orochimaru and be called a Sanin? She's a fucking _bitch_, that's all she is."

"So the problem you have with the Hokage is not so much the fact of _who_ she is, but _what_?"

The sneer came back full force.

"_Please_, you out of anyone in this fucking shithole know women are no good in a battlefield."

--

The table cracked under Tsunade's hand, Anko's killing intent reached critic levels and Midori's eyes flashed that dreadful red-on-black that announced to the world she was _pissed_.

Genma and Ibiki edged, discretely, away from them.

Kakashi continued to watch, taken by the delicate way Iruka's chakra was blanketing the room, discretely anchoring itself onto the brat's own chakra; it was the prelude of something grand.

--

"What about Kanna?"

Kanna had been the girl in Ichiro's Genin team. A sweet girl, really, she adored her teammates and mostly everyone she knew. Fiercely protective, as well, as all Inuzuka were prone to be. Iruka remembered her fondly as a hyper energy ball with tribal marks and sweet amber eyes, always carrying her pup in her arms.

"Dead," Ichiro snapped without remorse, "they told me I could do whatever I wanted to her after they were done with me. I could have let her go," his eyes glinted sadistically, "she cried like the bitch she was when I killed her."

--

The mirror cracked, and the sudden, choking deadly intent that began shadowing Iruka leaked through the cracks and into the room behind the mirror. It took their breath away; it was the wrath of a parent avenging a lost child. It was cruel, sadistic, bloodthirsty.

It was most certainly something far above Iruka's usual cranky temper.

--

"I see," the Chuunin said tersely, "good-bye, Ichiro."

He stood up to leave.

"Good-bye, Iruka-sensei," the boy was smirking arrogantly.

Iruka stood, and then narrowed his eyes, all his chakra flared, and Ichiro was lost into the illusion.

--

_"Shit,"_ Kakashi mumbled in a show of great eloquence.

Since the jutsu had been activated, he was the only one who actually knew what was going on. The rest only saw Iruka standing very still and the brat's breathing hitch every now and then.

It was evil, truth to be told. So evil it was beautiful, Kakashi thought privately. Iruka guided the illusion into a few nightmares, macabre enough it was became quite blatant that it was genjutsu, but every time the boy dispelled it, another layer came up and it began again. Kakashi had seen worse – had _suffered_ worse, at the hands of Itachi, but Itachi was a bastard and this was _Iruka_, and the fact remained that he'd underestimated the Chuunin. _Seriously_ underestimated him.

After long moments, the chakra shifted again, now feeding directly from the boy's, with Iruka merely nudging it in the right direction. Kakashi saw the boy and his fantasy – rather unrealistic at that – of how he escaped the ANBU quarters as mangled and injured as he was, and then followed him through dreamland Konoha as he made his way to meet his boss.

The moment the man appeared, wearing the Hidden Rock headband, Kakashi's blood ran cold, not so much as the revelation – he'd had his own theories, really – but at the icy hatred that marred Iruka's usually pristine light blue chakra into something dark and indigo and very much deadly. He could see the illusion, but he couldn't hear, so he didn't know what was being said.

"Hidden Rock," the Copy Nin mumbled, then blinked as the illusion-threads of chakra gathered around the boy and the killing intent in the Chuunin intensified so much Kakashi could _taste_ it.

Iruka watched emotionlessly as the boy screeched in fear and pain. He gurgled incoherently as he unconsciously set his own chakra against himself and cough up blood before falling forward limply. He was dead.

They _had_ planned to kill the brat after Iruka was done with him, but in consideration to his status as former student, they had decided to wait until _after_ Iruka left to do it. It was more a matter of charity, Midori's handiwork was mostly constant agony and they were actually doing the brat a service by finishing him off.

Iruka hadn't been kind about it, though, Kakashi had _seen_.

The teacher stared at the mangled corpse for about ten seconds, then exited the room wearing a smooth, calm façade which everyone could see right through.

"During the final stage of the exams, Matsude Yajiko, Hidden Rock Jounin, will attempt to murder either the Hokage or the Kazekage, or both, as a token to their alliance with Orochimaru. Hidden Rock attempts to gift Sound with one or both villages to gain his favor." He paused, letting the information sink. "And now, if you don't mind, I'm gonna fall asleep and not wake up for a week. Get someone to teach my classes for me, please?"

Kakashi dived to catch him as he fell. Iruka was oddly light in his arms; he was out cold. The Copy Nin looked at the Hokage uncertainly, choosing to ignore everyone else – mostly since everyone but Ibiki was gaping a bit; Genma's senbon was on the floor again.

"Go," the Fifth made a shooing motion with her hands, "take care of him, we'll manage from here. I'll summon you if I need you; if not, just keep out of my hair. _Go!_"

Kakashi hesitated for a second, then nodded sharply and, gathering Iruka close, disappeared in a cloud of smoke.


	12. Interlude: Freedom

**Training Kakashi.**

_Interlude: Freedom._

Rosuto Hikaru was not a Shinobi. She hadn't been born within the tall, protective walls of Konoha and her knowledge of the ninja way could be summarized as 'they kill things, really fast'. Her father was, as the rest of the men of their family, a jewel maker and a carving master but his brother was the specialist who created the jewels for the Daimyo's court, yet he never allowed this knowledge discourage him from working hard. One day, he would take his brother's place and become important on his own way. Her mother was a proper kimono wife, a woman of few words and little action; a perfect doll to sit next to her husband and to maintain their home functioning properly. Hikaru had two siblings, an older brother their father trained to become heir, and an older sister that followed after their mother's steps to become a proper Lord's wife.

Hikaru was her father's laughter and her mother's limited patience.

She was the child that ran around the large mansion complex, feet noisy against the tatami floor and hair bouncing free from the complicated knots her mother and her sister insisted on wearing. Hikaru was a free spirit incarnated with bright blue eyes and porcelain white skin, one that loved to run in the garden and watch the frogs and the koi in the pond. She played the flute to the stars of Bethlehem that grew unsupervised around the corners and delighted herself with the songs the birds seemed to compose only for her.

Her mother always scolded her for being too puerile, too undignified to secure herself a good husband as the one her sister was already betrothed to, but Hikaru didn't want to marry. She wanted to find all the types of tea in the world and taste them, to use those indulgent lessons her father had given her and create precious jewels for someone else to wear.

That was what she dreamt of at night, of being somewhere else; wearing someone else's skin, free of all the clustering norms and regulations that were imposed on her for belonging to an important family that had direct ties to the Daimyo's court. But while she dreamt and fantasized about it, deep down she knew she would end up married to a snobbish Lord and buried under half a ton of rich silk, and worst of all, pretending to be happy because that was a dream come true for everyone but her.

Which was she didn't outwardly objected when they informed her a Lord had requested her hand in marriage and her father had agreed after a dowry had been settled. She didn't even protest when she was told she would have to leave Fire Country and was most likely never going to see her homeland ever again. She was a free spirit, true, but she was blindingly loyal to those she loved and she acknowledged the pain she would bring to her beloved family if she refused.

Hikaru met him when she was fifteen and en-route to meet her future husband, a Konoha Shinobi that barely looked at her and seemed to find her terribly annoying. He was the best protection her father's money could buy her – and that was a lot – but the six day travel to the Land of Lightening for her to meet her fiancée seemed to become eternal as they set off, alone.

"Let me see your sword," she said suddenly as they crossed a bridge over an abyss.

Her horse was restless as its hooves clicked ominously against the old wooden planks. It was their first day on the road, and she was sure he was going brutally and inconsiderately fast for someone who traveled with a lady, but she didn't mind. She enjoyed the constant gallop as the grasslands were left behind and she felt a tiny bit of awe as she saw him run next to her, seemingly infatigable.

"No," he answered just as calmly, dark blue eyes sliding to her for a second before he tightened his hand around the reigns and led the horse onwards.

He was older than her, but not that much, barely five years or so; tall and muscled and with startlingly white hair. When she'd asked about it, he'd given her a particularly scathing acrid look and said nothing. Hikaru was not intimidated in the slightless. He was cranky and all sour disposition, but she was not afraid. He had given his word to protect her and see her to safety to her soon-to-be new home and she believed him; he wouldn't let her fall to harm.

But she was curious and dying to ask a thousand things. She had never been allowed outside the safety of her home's walls and this was a whole new world with vibrant colors and new scents, this was Life smiling at her and she wanted to grasp it and hold it close before she was locked up again.

"You're so serious, Hatake-sama," Hikaru mused in a wry tone, and despite the facts her words were respectful, her tone was playful.

"Hn," Konoha's White Fang answered non-committed, and then it was only the sounds of the forest around them.

Hikaru hid a smile behind the sleeve of her kimono.

--

"Let's stop here for the night."

Sakumo paused and blinked, startled. He turned to find his charge standing beside her horse, the pale pink kimono mudded on the edges as she smiled blindingly at him. Her long black hair was twisted awkwardly into a bun atop her head, random strands framing the fair features of a lady, but her eyes glinted with the same intensity of a star. Dusk was around the corner and already they could hear the cicadas chirping around them, creating a cacophonic chorus with the crickets' more sober tones.

He had served as a body guard for many ladies before; this type of mission was irritating but the Third had a way of looking at him when he casually nudged the scrolls to his hands that made it impossible to refuse even if he hated these missions with all the passion he could muster. He disliked babysitting overprotected brats that hated getting dirty and who rarely bothered to pull their own way as they traveled. Women weren't any weaker than any men he knew, but civilians had this nasty habit of training theirs into perfect wailing, chatter boxes that concentrated on the vainest matters and needed constant rescuing from their own stupidity.

Hikaru was still smiling.

"There's a town just two miles ahead, if we make haste, we'll reach it in an hour," his voice was a careful monotone to conceal his bewilderment for the situation.

"If you gather some wood, I can make tea and a light dinner," her smile turned teasing; her expression remained open, though he could detect a sense of begging underneath, "unless the big, bad, cranky shinobi really needs a bed to sleep."

"It would be… _inappropriate_," he said, but his words lacked much strength – he would rather sleep on a tree, lulled to a few hours of rest by nature's siren song than listen to the fretful rants of an inn keeper.

The Rosuto family home was near the border between Rain and Fire, thus the trail was long and sinuous. Sakumo had decided to ditch the formal carriage since they would be going through hostile territory and had sent them, instead, through another route with as a decoy. He'd been quite surprised when the lady in question just nodded and smiled brightly at the prospect of _not_ being covered senselessly in jewels and riches for the duration of their journey; she seemed awfully content to be carrying only the bare essentials. Grudgingly, he admitted he liked that, but he wasn't about to tell her so.

"I've never slept outside before," _and once we get there, I never will_, "but if it's unwise, then forgive me and lets us go."

Her eyes seemed saddened somehow, as if she had just remembered who she was and where she was heading to, but her smile didn't lessen. Hatake Sakumo felt oddly curious about this strange specimen of womanhood that preferred the clean air of the forest and the rough bark of a tree to the comfortable furnishings of an inn.

"There's a river two hundred yards in that direction," he said after a very long moment of bothersome silence, "we'll set camp there."

--

"What do you dream of, Hatake-sama?"

Hikaru looked up from where she was curled under a blanket against a crook in a tree, peering through the darkness of pre-dawn hours at the foliage above her head where she knew her guardian was. It was their final morning together; he'd told her they would reach her fiancée's state some time after noon. He was very cranky and moody when he spoke to her the night before, but he drank the tea she made without complaint and set against a branch to watch over her sleep.

They hadn't slept in an inn not even once since they left Hikaru's home.

He was sweet to her in rough, underhanded ways that she appreciated because no one ever bothered to ask what _she_ considered sweet and nice. She'd come to understand he was not a chatter box and he was not going to spill the story of his life to her, just because she happened to be there. That was not his Ninja Way. His Ninja Way was to be dutiful and fierce and silent and occasionally even brooding, but she could deal with that. She thought it was endearing in a way she would never be able to put to words.

He was her friend, even if she was only a mission for him.

That was alright, because in the past week, Hikaru had decided she would live to her own Ninja Way, even if she wasn't really a Ninja. The few words she'd managed to drag out of him about his lifestyle had proven to her that being shinobi was about much more than simply killing things and being fast about it. There was intensity in his voice when he spoke with reverence about his honor and his desire to preserve his village and protect those he held dear. She admired that and hoped to take a bit of that with her into her new life.

"I always dreamt of setting up a tea house," she continued, when, as expected, he didn't answer her question, "a large house with all the teas known to humankind. Or maybe taking after my father and make carvings out of precious stones."

_So that's what she's doing when she's not having a one-way conversation_, Sakumo thought wryly as he listened to her drone on about the different densities of each gem and how they had to be carefully prepared before they could become true master pieces. The wind ruffled the leaves and his hair and he closed his eyes against it, feeling melancholic and content at the same time.

"I dream of what all Konoha shinobi dream, of acquiring the strength to protect our village and bring honor to those before me," his voice rumbled low in the forest, dancing like a ghost until it reached the surprised woman below, "I dream of gaining enough courage to pursue my dream."

Hikaru smiled, though her eyes were lowered and her hands clenching spasmodically on the cloth that shielded her from the early morning chill.

"I need to bathe and change to proper clothing," she said in her most diplomatic tone, "please keep watch, Hatake-sama… and thank you."

She needn't have told him to watch her, when it was his job to do it. But then again, he needn't have given her advice when she so desperately didn't want to hear it.

Hikaru took a thorough, long bath and didn't complain about the icy water. She dried herself with the blanket that had served as a cover for her journey and then took her time to wound herself with layers of silk. Then she tied her hair into a confection of capricious loops and delicate pins and chains. She slipped into her sandals and walked slowly back to where Sakumo had already cleared camp and her horse was waiting for her. He gave her his hand and helped her onto the nervous animal; it was the first time he'd touched her.

He was well on his way back to Konoha by nightfall, mission a complete success and a small jade charm carved with his name resting in a pocket of his vest. Sakumo chose not to dwell on it, or why he began to wear it around his neck, or what had been of the curious creature that made excellent tea and loved the forest almost as much as he did.

It was better that way.

--

When he saw her again, he was in the middle of a surveillance mission, following an assassination target in a gambling town a day's travel from Konoha. There was a flicker of recognition in her eyes, before she sent one of the girls to his table with a polite request to meet the Mistress of the Tea House if he was not busy waiting for someone else. Sakumo knew it was a risk and it could potentially ruin the mission. The best course of action would be to ignore the summons and pretend he didn't know her. He nodded to the girl and followed her as discreetly as possible to the private garden behind the large building.

There was a koi pond with frogs and many stars of Bethlehem growing recklessly over the green grassland. It was a picture of peacefulness and relaxation worthy of a Zen master, but it was alive with that strange spirit he'd come to glimpse briefly in a six-day travel to the Land of Lightening.

"Hatake-sama," she bowed low to him when he entered and the smile she bestowed on him was brighter than he could remember, "It is a pleasure to see you again."

"Hikaru-san," he had a feeling she was no longer living under either of the last names he knew, "I must admit I am surprised to see you here."

There was a delicate tea set carved out of jade on the low table; the wolf motif on them had been deliciously worked by an expert hand and painstaking care. Underneath the dark red yukata Sakumo wore to melt into the crowd, a small jade charm seemed oddly warm against the pale skin of his chest. She was wearing a light blue kimono that made her eyes glow, but it was simple and unassuming, like the pink one she'd worn while he made her walk through mud under a thunderstorm. Her hair remained the same, though, pitch black, long enough to touch her calves and now simply held in a low pony tail that trailed after her in silence. Her hands moved elegantly around the table, serving the tea without proper ceremony but still with a certain ritual to it.

"A cherished friend gave me valuable advice before he left my side," Hikaru said softly, eyes fixed on the boiling water as she filled their cups, "I chose to follow it and my dreams rather than to be a coward." The smile was vaguely cheeky as she looked at him from under her lashes, "I'm afraid Matsumoto-sama was rather disappointed when his bride-to-be vanished into thin air."

"I would imagine," Sakumo answered with that dry irony that she had barely gotten to know before, "he must have sent many men searching for her."

"He got married a week afterwards," Hikaru retorted dryly, lifting her cup in a mocking of a toast, "but that is the past and this is now."

"Indeed."

"You know that if I can help you, I will."

She had grown, he realized, in the three years they had been apart. She was smarter and more cunning, she had managed to build her dreams out of nothing and succeed. He had heard about this particular Tea House before, where politics were served along the best tea available and where assassination was so subtle no one could ever trace it back to it. She had matured and she had seen the world. She had probably orchestrated her own share of 'incidents' within the halls of her establishment, but she had been clever and skilled enough it was not possible to blame them on her.

Sakumo's lip twisted into a smile, an approving, impressed smile, and he nodded.

"Though kindly do not destroy my home, Hatake-sama," she told him quite amicably, eyes dancing with amusement, pleased to see the smile there, "or at least take into consideration that I have nowhere else to go."

Hatake Sakumo laughed for the first time in about forever, about something that didn't directly relate to a life or death situation. Hikaru found he looked younger when he did that, and decided to prompt him to laugh more often.

--

There was a new Tea House in Konoha.

It had been built far away from the Hokage Tower and the center of the village, but still well within the security of its walls. It was a small two-story house built in the traditional style, with shoji screens and set two feet above ground. The garden around it had been fostered with utmost care and the pebbled path crossed a field of stars of Bethlehem that seemed to swing merrily at the smallest breeze. The actual Tea House was at the back, on a small courtyard that was half sheltered from the rain, but with low tables scattered on the grass. An artificial pond with frogs, toads and koi gave the backyard garden an air of peaceful tranquility that quickly became fairly popular for wary shinobi.

The owner was a young woman with a fierce spirit and a kind smile – _Hikaru, please, just Hikaru_ – that was rumored to have built half the place herself. She was a civilian, without an ounce of proper ninja training and she was probably the weakest member of the village, but she happened to live under the same roof of one of the strongest, so no one paid her any mind. What had made a few eyebrows rise had been the fact Hatake Sakumo, Konoha's White Fang, had been the one to build the other half of the place, and then promptly moved into it after selling his tiny apartment in one of the bachelor buildings near the tower.

His friends waited forever to be invited to the wedding, but it never came.

Instead, Hikaru – _just Hikaru, please_ – served the best darned tea anyone had ever tasted before, and even the Hokage took an hour each week to go sit on the grass behind the tiny house and drink to his heart content.

When Hikaru's pregnancy prevented her from actually performing her duties in the Tea House, a group of women from the village, mothers of future shinobis but who had come to see her as one of their own, took over her duties and didn't leave, not even after her son was born.

--

Hikaru never opposed Sakumo when he assured her the boy was brilliant. She still knew next to nothing about actual ninja training and their lives, despite the fact she lived in the heart of it. She merely smiled at her partner – never her husband, because then she would have to present herself as _Hatake_ Hikaru, when she was _just_ Hikaru – and tried to follow along his excited ramble about a genius. She observed them together, father and son, how they talked, quietly, and how solemn and serious Sakumo became around the tiny spitting image of himself. All Kakashi had inherited from her were her eyes, but even then, his were such a dark blue it actually took a slice of sunlight to see them as anything but black. He learned to be quiet, reserved like his father, but she could see in his movements the same gentleness she tried to teach him in things that wouldn't interfere with his future. She had no hopes for him _not_ being a ninja, she knew he would kill and fight and become a tall, distant shadow like Sakumo had been the first time they'd met. He wasn't much different now; a little affectionate, perhaps, but still silent and brooding and pretty much just a second shadow that followed her when he could.

Hikaru didn't know much about shinobi's ways, but she took what she could and was happy with what little she knew.

She did know, however, she had to have bandages ready by the time Kakashi came home from the Academy and she always took an hour off after lunch from the Tea House to eat with him and listen to his version of the day's fight. Being a genius was something great, according to Sakumo's words, but Kakashi's showed that being a genius tended to make others callous and even cruel; after all, if he was _really_ a genius, he should be able to withstand it, right?

She listened to him drone about unfairness for six months, exactly, and then he'd graduated with the highest honors. Sakumo had given the boy a scroll with a very difficult jutsu as his own way to congratulate him. Hikaru had actually asked him what he wanted and had been pleasantly surprised when he asked for lessons on how to make carvings out of jade and such, like she still did when she had the time.

Then he was taking missions, serving under a kind blond man who preferred his mint tea with no sugar and who always sat by the pond and spent hours watching the koi dance in the water. He was always polite and melancholic, in a way Hikaru pitied deeply if only because she felt he was too young to be so sad so soon, but those were kind of thoughts she treasured and kept to herself and no one else. Kakashi was awkward about his teammates; he complained about the girl's innocent crush on him – his father actually had a vaguely amusing reply to that – and resented the boy for being called a genius like him, despite being so 'bad he should still be in the Academy'.

Regardless of the strange power play in his team, Kakashi graduated and became a Chuunin a year after he left the Academy. His father gave him his treasured sword – the one Hikaru had asked to see, once, and which had never actually gotten around to peek at, afterwards – and a promise to train him to become the best. Hikaru merely gave him a folded dark blue cloth with all the utensils needed to carve gems and kissed his forehead asking him to be free.

Many, many years later, Kakashi would ponder why his mother never told him to be safe – like Rin's mother had done, every time they'd left on a mission – or to be strong – like Obito's had always done – or _happy_ – like his sensei would tell him in the quiet of the night, around the fire and in the middle of enemy land. His mother had never asked anything of him but for him to be free and follow his dreams, and it was strangely comforting in ways he would never be able to put to words.

When Kakashi was eight, his father was disgraced and people stopped coming to the Tea House, even if the Hokage and Kakashi's sensei still did. Hikaru never argued with his father, even when he lost all his fire and became an apathic, depressed shadow in the garden. He heard many conversations that should have been startling or distressing, but his mother always made things feel better, somehow.

"You should hate me," Sakumo would say, sitting by the pond and trailing his fingers delicately over the surface, "you had your dream come true, and I had to drag you here, to turn you into something you hate. And now I even destroyed that dream."

"Someone precious to me once told me that he dreamt of gaining enough courage to obtain his dreams," Hikaru sat next to him, smiling as her hair curled on the grass, "now I wish I could tell that person how important it is to be brave not while we're climbing, but when we're falling."

Kakashi watched his parents from behind a half opened shoji door; they made a strange picture indeed, because her mother always wore her light kimono and her wooden sandals, and his father owned nothing else but his uniform, and still… they made him feel safe against the raging of the village and the barely hidden scorn that whispered nasty lies – _he's weak, now, the mighty fang has fallen low_ – that he really didn't want to hear.

--

His parents never said they loved each other. Kakashi remembered asking his mother once, after his sensei had goaded him into staying a night in Obito's home and listening to the soft words whispered almost desperately when his father left for a very dangerous mission. Hikaru had smiled and ruffled the unruly white hair, telling him that some things, the really important things, not always had to be said to be true.

"But if I find my precious person," a seven year old Kakashi had asked, "shouldn't I tell them they are? That I love them and cherish them?"

"Maybe," his mother had replied, serving him a cup of tea with a practiced elegance Kakashi envied without really knowing why, "but it's much more important for you to _show_ them. We become what our actions dictate, Kakashi, for better or for worse. Words can be blown away by the wind, but the facts remain well after _we_ are gone."

The night Sakumo died, he'd told his son he loved him for the first time in his life. He'd kissed his wife without bothering to hide it, whispering loving words in a tone that made Kakashi's heart crack a bit around the edges. When he locked himself in the living room of their tiny home, Hikaru became stern and cold as Kakashi had never seen her, and she didn't allow him into the room even after the scent of blood permeated everything.

He moved into his own apartment a week after the funeral, the mask already set in place. Hikaru didn't stop him.

--

"I know what you meant," Kakashi said lowly as he appeared into his mother's office, "I know now."

She had redecorated the whole place, and Kakashi felt a stab of unjustified anger when he noticed the Tea House was full with people again. No one acknowledged him as his mother's son, not with his white hair and too dark eyes and he never bothered to correct them. He never talked about his father anymore, either.

Hikaru looked at her son from behind her desk – running the Tea House had become more of an administrative affair now, as she grew old and more girls became involved as their customers grew in numbers – noting the lopsided headband and that hated mask. He looked tired, worn out from a mission or another, but at the moment, his visible eye was blue. A dark blue still, but vibrant with sadness and anger and resentment, and very clearly blue.

"Our actions speak for ourselves, Kakashi," Hikaru stood up and walked up to him – he'd grown so much from the little white head that barely reached her knees – and noticed he was almost as tall as her chin, "but so do our choices."

He began shaking when she carefully unrolled the mask and flinched when she lifted the cloth covering his other eye. She studied the scar and the black-and-red pupil carefully, her fingers caressing his neck while she did. Then she leaned in and pressed a kiss over the scarred eyelid, wrapping her arms around her quivering son.

It didn't matter Kakashi was thirteen. It didn't matter he'd just been promoted to Jounin – one of the youngest in the whole history of Konoha. It didn't matter it'd been four years since he'd walked out of his mother's house and had refused to seek her out before.

He cried like a child and Hikaru let him, all the while whispering softly as she ran her fingers over the stubborn bangs.

"Be free, Kakashi, be free."

--

Kakashi was fifteen when a messenger came to his apartment with news his mother was dying. He had a litter of pups making a mess of his place, but he left them alone to destroy the damn place without a care. He followed the man back to the Tea House – it was closed for the first time since it had opened, all those years ago – and everything had been covered with white clothes. Kakashi made his way to his mother's room, closing the door behind him in silence and trying not to perturb the peace that had settled.

"I'm going to die," Hikaru said calmly, lying on her futon, "I wanted to see you before I died."

Her hair was still as long as Kakashi remembered; when he'd been a toddler, learning to walk, he would often grab the ink colored strands and stumble behind his mother as she went about her business. Her hair was his safest refuge from everything ranging from school bullies to his own silly fears of the shadows at night. When she sat down, her hair pooled behind her and child Kakashi had curled behind it, hiding from a world he couldn't understand behind the long strands of black. Now it seemed to frame her thin, sickly frame as it fell limply and listlessly around her. Her eyes were bright as always and she smiled at him just like she had always done.

Kakashi sat next to her for long hours afterwards, legs neatly folded as she'd taught him when he was little, hands resting on his knees and his head bowed as he listened to her breathing rasp and strain. They didn't talk. They didn't discuss the great secrets that stood between them; he didn't tell her he was planning on proposing to Rin if he failed the ANBU exam, that he'd gotten himself a rival named Gai and that he was exasperatingly loud, but too earnest for Kakashi to scorn. He didn't tell her about his dogs and how hard it turned out to be to train them, how they've chewed on everything he owned already and how he couldn't bring himself to scold them properly. He didn't tell her about Genma, his new roommate, and his hidden stash of porn and how it had made Kakashi blush three thousand different shades of red when he understood what the books were about.

He didn't ask her about his father or her past, what should be done with the Tea House or what name he should put on her grave. He just sat there, until her breathing grew more and more labored and her arms beckoned him close. He refused to let himself cry as he lay there in her arms, his ear pressed to her chest, listening to those horrible sounds that heralded her end.

"Be free, Kakashi," Hikaru's voice was little more than a tired murmur as she pressed her dried lips to his head, "be free."

Her illness was something no one knew how to treat, something that had puzzled all of Konoha's medic Nins and which had saddened many after her death. Kakashi didn't cry in the funeral, and insisted for her grave to have no last name – she had been _just Hikaru_ since forever, and he had no wish to change that – and allowed only a very small epithet to be written under her name: _she was free_. He had toyed with the idea of destroying the Tea House; there were too many bad memories hiding behind its shoji doors and he had no use to it. But one of the women that worked there convinced him to establish a contract between them; they would continue to run the Tea House and would pay him the part that would have belonged to his mother. He wouldn't need to bother himself with it ever again and no one would have to know he owned it.

Kakashi signed the same paper about thirty different times before he left the Tea House. He shoved his copy of the deal in one of his drawers and forgot about the whole thing afterwards.

He never returned to the Tea House again, either.

--

Kakashi became ANBU when he was sixteen, for his extraordinary performance during the Kyubi's attack and he was, once more, the youngest in the history of Konoha. He felt a pang of something dark and ironic stir within him as he took stack of all that had been lost. His sensei and Rin, and with them a lifetime in his Genin team. Friends, brave people he'd fought with or merely strangers that he'd chatted with while they waited in line at the grocery store.

Genma said he was brooding too much and gifted him his first Come Come book and a bottle of sake to go with it. Kakashi didn't drink the bottle but devoured the book and its senseless prose avidly. It was a ludicrous story, about a ninja that fell in love with his young charge, a high lady that he was supposed to deliver to her future husband. The sex was bad and awkwardly set, unrealistic to the point it was hilarious, rather than arousing - although Kakashi's humble opinion of sex mechanics was restricted to those handful of times he and Rin had been too tightly wound after a mission and which had made him think proposing to her would be a good idea, even if they were still ridiculously young. But Rin was dead, _dead_. And his sensei, who had become Hokage at some point, was gone as well. And all Kakashi had was the stupid book with its senseless story of love conquering everything in the end and something ludicrous like that.

He read the book until he could quote it line by line, though, because it made him feel better about himself and his loss. By that point he remembered he'd lost many things, but that he still had Genma and his cheeky grin to greet him every morning and Gai and his insufferable challenges every now and then, and even Kurenai, Genma's girlfriend, who seemed to think Kakashi needed to be taken care of because he was male and obviously not capable of doing it himself.

Two weeks after he was appointed ANBU, Kakashi asked Genma where he could buy the rest of the Come Come series and his friend had jokingly asked if Kakashi was turning into a pervert.

Kakashi laughed like he hadn't laughed in ages and they went together to the bookstore, much to the amusement of the owner.

--

Kakashi lived alone again when he was eighteen. Genma had tried living with Kurenai and it had been a disastrous experience indeed. Afterwards, since Kakashi had moved out of their apartment into somewhere smaller, he found solace with another good friend, a newly appointed Jounin named Raidou and he became best friends with him pretty fast. Gai was two years older than Kakashi and he already had a Genin team to train, so their challenges became more and more distant from each other, though many things remained between them, holding them close. Things like the fact Gai had a knack for saving Kakashi from his own stupidity more often than not and that he'd never made a big deal of looking at his face. Gai even knew why Kakashi wore the mask, after that stupid drinking night after he became an ANBU as well, and they've been drunk enough to spill the beans about everything they were. Gai had promised Kakashi that night would stay between them, without him having to ask first, but hinted at the possibility of it happening again, if the need ever arose.

Kakashi kept to the safety of his plotless, pointless porn and reassured Gai it would not happen again.

Kurenai had a new friend, one Kakashi couldn't really resent for taking her away from Genma, because Asuma was the sort of laid back manipulative bastard you loved regardless of your thoughts on the matter. He always had Anko at his heels, something which had made things tense between him and Kurenai for a while, until everyone acknowledged that Anko was pretty much a psychotic asexual… _thing_ and left it at that.

Anko dragged Ibiki into their little gatherings, since Ibiki was hers and the ANBU's boss and she had this tiny, twisted crush on him that was based mostly on the fact he was scarier than she was.

By the time Kakashi was twenty, he no longer felt like a genius among mediocre people. He no longer was the shadow in the corner – Ibiki generally beat him to it – or the outcast for his past. He was just another stressed Jounin that gathered with his friends in Anko's state to relax and unwind after months of tension and dangerous missions.

At twenty, Kakashi had mourned everything he thought he should mourn; he read porn and was fashionably late all the time. He had friends that were close enough to dub for family and a pack of dogs that actually did what he told them to do, without biting him in the process. He had a spotless mission record and he'd become something of a legend for his mastery of the Sharingan.

At twenty, Kakashi thought his life was complete, but he couldn't shake the feeling he was missing something of utmost importance – _Be free, Kakashi_ – it would take him nearly another decade to figure out.

--

At twenty-nine, Kakashi felt old.

He was pushing thirty, but he felt he'd lived long enough to pass off for forty. And as he mused about the awkwardness of his life, he set his precious bundle of unconscious Chuunin on the futon. He thought about the ups and downs of the last years as he carefully unzipped Iruka's vest and took off his shirt. He thought about the fights and the loss, taking off his shoes. He thought of his mother when he set the quilt over the tired man and hesitated for a moment before he undid the ponytail and let the long strands of hair fall everywhere. He removed Iruka's forehead protector and left it on the table.

He had much to think about; from the wisdom of getting involved with someone at this point in his life, to the insanity of it being an explosive, temperamental Chuunin who apparently had his own share of secrets no one knew about.

_Be free, Kakashi_.

Kakashi shrugged to his own mind, then unplugged the alarm clock in the nightstand and stood up silently. Lying in bed, Iruka looked young, much younger than he was and in turn made Kakashi feel older than he really was.

Not questioning the sudden impulse, Kakashi left the apartment and rushed to his own. He spent nearly half an hour messing up the place until he found the small, blue cloth with all his carving utensils and then some more time until he found a piece of old jade big enough to what he had in mind. He asked Bull to keep an eye on things while he was gone, nodding to himself when the dog merely grunted in reply.

When he returned to Iruka's apartment, everything was as he had left it, so he just sat in a corner of the bedroom, spread his tools and set to work.

_Be free, Kakashi_, his mother's voice whispered from across time. _I'm getting there,_ Kakashi replied, his eye flickering to the sleeping figure for a moment, _I'm getting there._


	13. Lesson Twelve: Trust

**Training Kakashi.**

_Lesson Twelve: Trust._

"Gaara?" Lee dropped the steady cautionous stand he'd been holding for the past two hours, "Wanna go get something to eat?" 

The redhead tilted his head to the side, arms crossed over his chest and standing in the same spot he'd started when their sparring began. He had to admit it hadn't been nearly as exciting as a real fight would have been; Lee wasn't really trying to get through his defense and his speed was laughable compared to what Gaara had seen before. At the same time, though, the enthusiasm and the sheer _glee_ Lee displayed were enough to entertain Gaara, even if he wasn't really doing anything aside standing there and letting the Sand block everything. 

He wasn't entirely sure what the point of this 'challenge' was, but Lee seemed to be fairly sure of what his objective was. He just didn't seem to be about to disclose that information to Gaara. 

"It's still early for lunch," the Kazekage replied expressionlessly. 

"Ah, yeah, about that…" Lee looked a bit guilty, Gaara was curious. "See, I wasn't thinking about a proper _meal_. I mean, you've won the first challenge—" 

"I did?" 

"—and I was thinking, we should celebrate!" 

"Celebrate." Iridescent aqua eyes fixed on the Taijutsu expert; Gaara tilted his head minutely to the side when Lee nodded earnestly. 

He seemed to be terribly earnest about everything he did. 

"Gai-sensei always indulges me with ice-cream when I complete a new training regime properly, I was thinking, maybe…" Lee's excited ramble came to a stop when he noticed the pronounced frown on Gaara's face and his narrowed eyes. "…what?" 

There was hope for him, yet. 

"Ice-cream?" This time, there _was_ an inflexion to the redhead's question, and he actually _blinked_ in bewilderment. "What is ice-cream?" 

Lee stared at him, torn between shock, horror and pity. 

"You… you've never tried ice-cream before?" His voice hitched, horrifically surprised. 

"No." Gaara was starting to feel uncomfortable. 

He wasn't used to social conditioning or social gatherings or 'celebrations'. The only thing to celebrate back in Sunagakure would have been for him to be killed, and that hadn't happened yet, and when it happened, he wasn't going to be around to see it. The way Lee was looking at him was alien and it was starting to piss him off; it was quite, quite close to pity. Maybe he should leave, pretend the whole thing hadn't happened. He'd wanted friends, anyway, not rivals. 

"Oh my, this is an _abomination_," Lee was sparkling again, "we must correct it at once!" 

Gaara was about to protest, but then he was being hurled around Konoha by an excited Genin and all he managed was a disgruntled splutter of indignation. 

He wondered why the Sand hadn't launched itself at Lee and crushed him five different ways into next week. 

But then, before he could form a clear hypothesis, his companion announced cheerfully that they were there. Gaara looked up at 'there'. It was a hideously bright establishment decorated in blues and reds and whites. Gaara was liking the idea of this 'ice-cream' thing less and less with each second that went by. Lee dragged him inside, gourd and all. Inside, it smelled… sweet. Gaara blinked a bit at the sheer _brightness_ of everything around him. There were a few tables scattered around with children and woman milling around, laughing and being happy. Gaara frowned a bit, because he was never allowed to be near so many defenseless people back at home, but no one really seemed to give him much of a stare. The gourd caught a few curious glances, but most attention was centered on Lee, who was busy speech-ing the poor man behind the counter to death. It made Gaara's lips twitch into a faint smile. He looked around because he could swear he felt a familiar chakra pattern nearby, but all he saw was that guy that had fought Temari back on _those_ Chuunin exams, casually eating from a bowl of something sticky and brown. He seemed very carefree and happy and certainly not staring at Gaara. He even nodded at him in acknowledgement, before going back to his… ice-cream. 

If Lee hadn't turned around and shoved a cone of vanilla ice-cream right into his hands, Gaara would have noticed the fact the seat across Shikamaru's was awkwardly set back, as if it had been vacated hastily moments before. Or he would have seen the very familiar fan tucked underneath the table. 

As it was, Lee was looking at him with those bright, sparkling, round eyes and a smile wide enough to make Gaara's facial muscles twitch in sympathy. He was giving him a hopeful, don't-kick-my-puppy sort of look that had absolutely no effect on Gaara. 

He stood there for a moment, impassive with a cone of slowly melting ice-cream and not a clue as to what to do with it. 

Lee had a stroke of genius – it was really more like a brick falling on his head – and realized that what was about to happen should _not_ be witnessed by anyone else, as it would be a Special Moment of Friendship. Thus, he dragged Gaara away, again. 

The redhead grunted, balanced his limbs into a semblance of order as they were roughly tugged away and managed to not spill his treat as Lee led him away from the shop and back to the training grounds. He still didn't know what he was supposed to be doing with ice-cream. 

"He's gone," Shikamaru deflated visibly as a pig-tailed blonde head appeared from a corner, shimmering back to view. 

"That," Temari said in an alien, nervous voice, "was ridiculously terrifying." 

"That was ridiculously bothersome, you mean," the Chuunin mused wryly, watching as his companion sat down again. 

Temari smirked. Then she noted Shikamaru had finished his chocolate sundae and had seen to himself to start with hers. She whacked him upside the head with her fan. 

He wondered why he even bothered. 

-- 

Gaara was not present when the aspirants for the Chuunin exams gathered. Lee knew, because he'd looked around. He saw Kankuro in a corner, brooding, and he waved at him. He startled, stared, and then turned back to his brooding. Lee didn't pay it much mind. He saw Temari standing by her brother, but all her attention was centered on glaring venomously at Ino, who was very busy discussing something with Sakura-chan, who was dubbing for Shikamaru in his team, since he had already graduated and _she_ didn't have a team to start with. Lee felt a pang of gushing crush at the sight of the pink haired girl, but continued to scan the room. 

Gaara was not in it. 

"You alright, Lee?" He turned to find Ten Ten staring curiously at him, with Neji looking at him curiously. 

"Yes, of course!" 

Lee beamed at his teammates using Good Guy Pose #18 and decided he would ask Gaara about it later. 

-- 

Kakashi slid into Iruka's kitchen silently, kunai at hand, tense and ready to kill. 

"If you're just gonna gape, put that shit down and give me a hand." 

That was… fairly anti-climactic. Blinking a bit, the Jounin found Iruka's nosy, voyeuristic, neurotic neighbor fussing around a grocery bag. He blinked again. That expression, right there, the risen eyebrow and the 'I'm so laughing at you, but you can't see it, sucker' with the tilt of her mouth barely twitching upwards… that was eerily _Ibiki_ and it forced a shudder out of him. 

"What are you doing here?" He ventured after he'd beaten up that mental image with all his might – stupid Genma and his stupid words and that stupid mental image of female Ibiki and stupid Naruto for creating that stupid jutsu that _made_ it possible. 

"Shut up. Be useful. Peel those." 

Kakashi caught the bag of potatoes instinctively. He blinked for the third time in as many minutes. Bizarrely, he found himself sitting on a table, peeling them with his kunai, which he still had in his hand. Midori set a bowl of water on the stove and began pouring spices and odd things into it. 

She looked moody. 

"What are you doing here?" 

Kakashi was puzzled. 

"Oh, you're done? Awesome." 

She grabbed the peeled vegetables from his hands, chopped them a wee bit too enthusiastically and then unceremoniously shoved them into the boiling water with the rest of her strange concoction. 

Kakashi's visible eye twitched, he didn't like to be ignored. 

Before he could put his threats to words, however, she had fixed a plate of the steaming stew and stalked out of the kitchen and into Iruka's bedroom. Kakashi followed in a bewildered mood, feeling like he was intruding in something personal and secret that no one should ever know about. 

"Wake up, jackass, I brought you lunch." 

The Jounin felt the need to snort as the smaller woman poked the sleeping Iruka with her free hand. The name-calling shouldn't have been so endearing, but it was sisterly and affectionate and it almost compensated the fact he was being soundly ignored. 

Almost. 

"I don't think—" 

"No, I don't suppose you do," Midori set the plate by the nightstand, giving him a mildly recalcitrant look. Women, he was never going to figure them out, it seemed, but he was pretty sure he hadn't done anything to piss _her_ off. He barely knew her. "'Kay 'Ruka, you asked for it." 

The medic Nin pressed both of her index fingers together, gathering a sizeable amount of chakra in them, before she poked Iruka's side, leaking her chakra into his. The results were immediate and quite spectacular. Kakashi found himself grinning even if he shouldn't as Iruka sat up, breathing wildly and with one hand clenched on his bare chest. His eyes darted around the room for a moment, but he seemed to calm down a bit when he caught sight of Kakashi and he slumped against the pillows when he saw Midori's reproachful expression. 

"Guh." Iruka mumbled as he turned to bury his face against his pillow. Midori was not amused. 

"Shut up and eat," she poked him again, and despite the fact there was no chakra involved, he flinched. "I made lunch, your pet Jounin even helped with it." 

"…I want take-out." 

"Hey!" 

Midori blinked at the miffed tone and turned around as if she was noticing Kakashi for the first time. Iruka's lip twitched into a faint smile, half apologetic, half amused, and then he sat up. His hair was mussed and his eyes half lidded and Kakashi thought, a bit guiltily, that he looked absolutely delectable like that. He was still half asleep, though, despite the rather rude awakening. 

"Give me that, mother-hen," his eyes danced merrily, though his voice was sluggish and sleepy. Kakashi thought he looked a bit drunk, "can't have you start clucking, you're gonna freak Kakashi out." 

Kakashi and Midori snorted at the same time, but for completely different reasons. Then the Copy Nin was being glared at, _again_, though he had no clue _why_. There was something intrinsically _predatory_ in the green eyes that tried to bore a hole in his chest, something that reminded Kakashi of a very, very possessive dog. He wondered if he could get away with a barked laugh without the whole thing degenerating into violence. 

"You're cute," Iruka slurred to no one in particular as he set the empty bowl on the nightstand and then fell asleep, half of his body hanging down the edge of the bed. 

Midori reached out to set him straight, but without her being able to see, much less _feel_ it, Kakashi had already moved and beaten her to it. She raised an eyebrow at the dangerous glare set on her. 

"What did you do?" 

"Feed him," Midori shrugged, eyes finally taking a look around Iruka's bedroom – it was messy and there was a corner infested by utensils and chunks of jade that certainly didn't belong to Iruka. "Stubborn idiot doesn't like IVs. Never did, I think he's afraid of needles." 

She grinned somewhat amusedly as she took the bowl and retreated to the kitchen. Kakashi set the unconscious Chuunin back in bed, holding back a twitching smile as Iruka snuggled back under the covers. He followed the voice back to the kitchen, wanting answers, _damnit_, and starting to get a bit irritated at being treated like… like… like whatever the hell she was treating him like. 

"If he let me put one on him, he could sleep the exhaustion off on his own. Since he's obstinate like a mule, I ought'a wake him and feed him once a day." She set the plate on the sink, paused, and then turned to give Kakashi a speculative, thoughtful look. "Though since you have pretty much leave from Hokage-sama to _be_ here…" Midori washed it quickly, then moved around with practiced ease, "Oh well, if you can deal with the brats and the sleepwalking, I'm dropping feeding duty on you as well." 

"Brats?" 

She shoved a plate of stew on his hands and then sauntered to the front door. She was gone before Kakashi finished blinking. 

Scratch not understanding them, women were _insane_. 

The apartment seemed oddly empty now that the Chuunin was gone, the only sounds remaining being Iruka's steady breathing and a drip from the sink. Kakashi scratched the side of his head, messing his hair a bit. He had no clue what had just happened and he had a feeling he would live longer and better if he didn't find out. He didn't like the girl much, anyways, she was freakishly bossy and… weird. He didn't like her so he didn't think about her and just sat down to eat. 

There was a pause. 

She was weird and bossy and _freaky_, but goddamn, it _was_ a good stew. 

-- 

They were being invaded by runts. 

Kakashi was practically run over by a hoard of children as soon as he opened the door to see who was knocking. Boys and girls with flowers and chocolates and 'get well' cards that pushed him far into the living room before the door closed. And then he was being stared at by a couple dozen anxious, determinate eyes that wanted _answers_. And wanted them _now_. Of course, now that they weren't stomping on him anymore, they actually _noticed_ him, and they froze and stared at him, torn between fear and curiosity. 

Kakashi felt a migraine growing somewhere behind the sharingan. 

"What happened to Iruka-sensei?" He recognized the brat standing up against him; he was Asuma's dreaded nephew, the one that had given early white hair to about _everyone_ he met. 

Kakashi thought, wryly, that at least he was not going to suffer _that_ on top of everything else. Small miracles, he'd come to realize, were the key to survive this whole ordeal with his sanity intact. 

And now Asuma's nightmare apparently had stepped in as the spokesman of the litter of brats crowding the small apartment. 

Kakashi decided that skinning the brats alive would be highly therapeutic but would mean no sex in the foreseeable future considering Iruka's unexplainable attachment to them. So he restrained himself. Barely. 

"He's asleep," _and he'll love you forever and ever if you let him stay that way._

"No way!" A squealing voice, too high pitched for Kakashi's nearly dog ears to hear, came from the back. "Iruka-sensei would never sleep in!" 

"They said he was sick." A sourly looking girl informed him before he could answer the… mop of hair by the window. 

"Well, yes—" 

"Iruka-sensei is too cool to fall asleep!" 

"Iruka-sensei is too cool to be _tired_!" 

"Iruka-sensei is _cool_." 

The murmurs of agreement quickly seconded the bold proclamation and a sea of determined eyes and set jaws washed over him. Kakashi felt like backing against a wall and sliding down the floor, whimpering pathetically as he curled into a protective ball and waited for them to leave. Instead, he looked at the ceiling, resisted the urge to rub the bridge of his nose and tried to silence the roar that settled in the living room. 

Iruka, of course, mentally exhausted as he was, was probably asleep like a baby, the bastard. 

_Fucker_, Kakashi thought snidely as the migraine hit him with a vengeance and the noise level in the living room reached riot-ish proportions. He went to the kitchen, rummaged a bit, caught a frying pan and a metal bowl and slammed them as hard as he could to get the attention of the children. 

"Hey!" Konohamaru gave him a reproachful look, and he was promptly imitated by everyone else. "How's Iruka-sensei supposed to sleep if you make all that noise? It's not polite!" 

Kakashi felt like crying and laughing and tearing his hair off a bit. He did neither and merely stared the boy down for a moment. 

"Iruka-sensei will be fine tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, at most," _dear god, I **hope** so_, "and he can't have visits right now. But he'll be glad to know you came, regardless." 

"Can we leave him our presents?" A girl with a _queer_ hairdo asked hopefully, eyes and freckles looking at him imploringly. "We brought him presents." 

"Momma made cookies, I brought some." 

The rumbling of voices was starting again – hell, how could _children_ make so much goddamn _noise?_ – and Kakashi braced himself. 

"Okay, okay!" He waved his arms a bit helplessly. He didn't like children. He couldn't deal with children. This was worse than Naruto and the flu or Sasuke and the rain or Sakura and the ivy. This was all those terrible disasters that he'd endured with his team rolled up in a little ball and shoved down his throat. "Just… leave the gifts and I'll tell him you were here." 

"Promise?" A tiny blond boy with mistrusting grey eyes looked at him seriously. Kakashi sighed. 

"Promise." 

"_Yey!_" 

Kakashi watched them invade the living room with towers of stuff; dear god, did they think Iruka was going to _die_ or something? If this was what they did when he missed school for a day, what the hell would they do if their teacher disappeared on a mission or something? 

What would _he_ do, if Iruka disappeared in a mission or something more serious than mental stress and physical exhaustion? 

Kakashi stood by the door as the children left, each one bowing politely – oh, so they had manners _now_ – and muttering a soft, morose 'thank you, Kakashi-san' as each passed him by. The Copy Nin thought about his own reactions and fears and for the umpteenth time decided that this crazy idea was _so_ not going to work. He was so deep in his contemplation of how things weren't going to work, that it took him about ten seconds to realize all of them had left. 

What the hell was _wrong_ with him? And what was it that every time he was in this apartment he just… _changed_? 

Closing the door, Kakashi sorted his steps around the mountain of stuff and made his way to the bedroom. Iruka was still sleeping peacefully and after a quick check of his vitals, the Copy Nin went back to his corner to continue his carving. 

_You'll be the death of me_, he didn't tell Iruka as he thought about it, _but hell, I'm so gonna let you do it anyway._

-- 

"—exam. Stupid exam." 

Kakashi blinked as he watched Iruka mumble incoherently. The Chuunin threw the covers off his body and stumble into a mildly stable standing position. The Jounin uncurled from his corner, concerned. Iruka was still asleep. He followed the stumbling teacher around the apartment, not entirely sure what he was supposed to be doing or if he should wake him at all. He watched with certain amusement as Iruka went to the kitchen, served himself a glass of water and drown it avidly, only leaving a few drops to trail down his jaw, his neck, his chest… 

_Concentrate_. Kakashi forcefully told himself that he was _not_ going to molest a sleeping man. _Really_. Even if said sleeping man was deftly undoing his pants and muttering about needing a wank. Kakashi swallowed thickly and followed Iruka as he made his clumsy way to the bathroom. 

He didn't look. Honest. He was a pervert but he wasn't _that_ much of a pervert. He was a book pervert, not a peeping tom. 

He so wanted to slam his head against the wall when the Chuunin washed his hands like the good boy he was, but forgot to zip up his pants back up before walking out of the bathroom. Kakashi realized someone up there in the sky was laughing, and laughing _hard_, at his expense. 

Iruka snorted and grumbled something about repainting the windows and then he was once more thrown over the bed, dead to the world. Kakashi stood next to the futon, looking down at the teacher with morbid fascination and a tidy bit of exasperation. He debated with himself for a long moment if he should or shouldn't fix the man up. Then had a visual of Iruka actually waking up and the awkwardness that would follow the current state of his clothing. 

_It's for a good cause,_ Kakashi told his conscience as he rolled the man to his back and fixed his pants. He set his eyes on the ceiling. _Think bad things. Unsexy things. You're so not touching his cock. Think… think… Think Naruto! And Sasuke! And an angst-ridden, tryst in the forest between bitter rivals and former best friends, yeah… hot._ _Shit, I did not just think that._ Kakashi decided he was a pervert. Unrepentant up to that point, and undefeated. He covered Iruka with his quilt and bit back a moan when the brown haired man rocked a bit against the bed. 

"Won't sleep with me… bastard," the teacher rolled around until his chest was tight against the bedding, "_Mhm,_ Kakashi…" 

Kakashi fled the scene and went for the bathroom, whimpering pathetically. 

-- 

"You look like shit." 

Midori was grinning. Kakashi wanted to kill her. Then she offered him a cup of steaming tea and he figured he could forgive her. But only a little. He still didn't like her. 

"Just got back from work," she told him innocently, setting another grocery back on the counter and setting to prepare… dinner, it seemed, "your girl passed the first test and Anko threw them all into the forest again. That woman has no sense of creativity. Anyway, Hokage-sama wants you to know that everything's alright and you can stay here until Iruka gets better; she's not giving you missions until he's recovered. I probably shouldn't mention the fact she was laughing her ass off at you while she did. Oh well, do you prefer chicken or beef?" 

At the word 'beef', Kakashi spluttered a little and most certainly did _not_ think perverted things about the man sleeping peacefully in the bedroom. Midori looked at him expectantly. He shrugged and tried hard to not think it had been _just_ a day, because he felt like he'd lost a whole _decade_ of his life. 

"Hn," Midori threw a bit of both into the frying pan with the spices and the chopped mushrooms, "how was it, though? Hard day?" 

"There were brats," Kakashi informed her tartly, though not _as_ tartly as he could, because apparently she was going to feed him and that merited recognition, "and he sleepwalks." 

"Oh yeah, that he does." She was grinning. "He's queer like that. He didn't talk to you? He can hold a conversation for almost half an hour when he's like that. Poor sod." 

Kakashi wasn't grinning. He looked at her efficient hands and the dark rings around her eyes. 

"What are you doing here?" 

Midori maneuvered the frying pan with moderate skill, before she took out their meal and served it. She turned off the stove and refilled Kakashi's teacup. Then she sat down across from him and narrowed her eyes. 

"_He_ might trust you enough to fuck with you, that's alright. More information than I need, but that's okay," she pushed the plate at him, along with chopsticks and a barely hidden snarl, "but _I_ don't trust you to take care of yourself, much less him. And he needs care, Kakashi_-sama_. He needs someone to reassure his students he's alright, because they always panic and make a fuss when he skips a day. He needs someone to follow him around while he's sleepwalking and make sure he doesn't do anything stupid, like leaping out of the window and ending up at the Hokage monument. He needs someone competent to wake him and feed him and promise not to stick a needle in his arm and let him wade through this alone. He needs someone _there_. And I'd love to say I trust his judgment, him being my best friend and all, but truth is that I don't. And you're a thousand times stronger than me and you know all these powerful jutsus, but hear this, Hatake, _I_ don't trust you, even if he does. I'm gonna stand back and watch and let you screw up and down all you want. You're going to hurt him and he's going to hurt you and that's okay, I'll stand that, 'cause relationships are all about pull and push. I'm gonna talk to you and be nice to you and fucking _feed _you, if it's necessary. Because for some reason I can't understand, you make him happy. And he being happy is the only thing I really want for him." Her eyes narrowed dangerously, venom creping at her tone. "But you betray _his_ trust, Hatake Kakashi, and I swear to my family name that you'll have to rip me apart to make me stop hunting you down." 

Kakashi sat very, very silent and very, very stiff. Everything he knew about Iruka fluttered around his mind, then his eyes narrowed. 

"You think I'm going to pull a Mizuki on him," it wasn't a question. 

"Yes." 

"I won't." 

"Hn," Midori snorted as politely as possible, then relaxed a little. The thick tension in the room faded to bearable levels. "Eat before it gets cold, I hate having my cooking go to waste." 

Kakashi looked at her for a long moment, reevaluating her space in Iruka's life and her importance. Steadily, holding her gaze, he lowered the mask and took a mouthful of chicken. Her eyes narrowed a bit and he knew she was studying him – doing everything Iruka hadn't done, when he'd shown _him_ his face. 

"It's good, Midori-san," he muttered after he swallowed, but he didn't smile, "thank you." 

She didn't trust him, not like Iruka did. And he didn't like her, not really. But for the sake of the Chuunin sleeping in the bedroom, the first seeds of respect had been already planted. 


	14. Lesson Thirteen: Camaraderie

**Training Kakashi.**

_Lesson Thirteen: Camaraderie._

Kakashi was not amused. 

"Hey, don't look at me like that," Asuma shrugged, "I _do_ have a reasonable reason to be here." 

"Really." The Copy Nin didn't seem particularly convinced. 

Next to Asuma, Kurenai grinned discretely, and standing behind, Genma was smirking widely and mockingly. Kakashi considered slamming the door on their faces and going back to sorting Iruka's assorted get-well presents, but he figured that wouldn't be particularly polite. 

He wasn't feeling very polite at the moment. 

"Since you're so, eh, _busy_," the chain smoker's smile was lazy and teasing, "I thought you'd like to know how your girl's doing in the exam so far." 

"Such a helpful friend, what would I do without you?" Sarcasm was so thick it was nearly palpable. Genma snorted. 

"And I'm here because we know you can hardly take care of yourself," Kurenai's eyes glinted, completely ignoring Kakashi's scathing retort, "we wouldn't put poor Iruka-sensei through that." 

"_Why_ does everyone think I can't take care of myself?" 

"Eh, no offence man," Asuma raised an eyebrow, "but when was the last time you cleaned your apartment? That stain on the carpet? From the time Anko threw up? It's been _years_." 

"And last time you cut your hair?" Kurenai pulled one of the wild locks to prove her point. 

"Not to mention the porn." Genma nodded wisely, "you ain't really what we'd call… you know..." Kakashi glared. "_Anyway_, I just came to get a laugh." 

He shrugged while Asuma shook his head and Kurenai rubbed the bridge of her nose. Kakashi gave his friends an over-all unamused glare before he rolled his visible eye and let them in. 

"Your honesty is flattering, Genma_-kun_, really," he turned his back on them and made his way back to the couch. 

The living room looked like a war camp. All manner of glasses, flower pots and general containers had been filled with water and the various flower arrangements that Iruka's students had brought; from lilies picked on their way there to more complicated bouquets. A towering, imposing stack of get well cards dominated the low table in the center, which Kakashi had been busy trying to sort out. The kitchen was filled with various tidy bits, from home made cooking to general treats and there was no available space in the fridge anymore. 

"Whoa, someone's popular," Genma noted wryly as they made their way to sit on the couch. 

"And where's your dear patient, anyway?" The leader of team 8 wondered curiously as she swept her red eyes around the room, noting with faint approval that it was very clean. 

"Asleep," Kakashi said blankly and still feeling very cranky. 

Iruka had had two more sleepwalking episodes, one an hour or so before midnight and one earlier that morning. As it was, the Jounin hadn't had much rest, all things considered, and his carving wasn't going as well as planned. It was already ten in the morning, and the sun was coming through the window bright and disgustingly cheerful and it made him miserable and gloomy. He didn't mind looking after the Chuunin, what with him sleeping all the time, but Midori had dropped by before leaving for work and the tense encounter had finished souring up Kakashi's morning. A handful of students had dropped by again, as well, though not in such virulent numbers as the day before, to deliver some herbs and tea before they hurried away to the Academy. 

It was reaching a fairly ridiculous point, truth to be told. 

"Did the guy really hit Morino Ibiki?" Asuma was busy opening a window and sitting on the windowsill, lit cigarette leaving a small trail behind him, "I heard he broke his nose." 

"He _did_," Genma nodded fervently, "I was there, I mean… just, _bam_." He punched air for effect. "Ridiculously brave, or stupid, or both. It was glorious." 

"Only you would find displays of mindless violence glorious, Genma," Kurenai admonished without any real bite behind it, but it caused the senbon user to grin wickedly. 

Kakashi had gone back to reading get-well cards and setting them neatly into piles. He supposed he could just dump the whole lot in a single pile and leave Iruka to deal with them, but he'd been bored. He'd gone to the memorial after the little squabble with the medic Nin – a few cold words and a glare here and there – but he hadn't been able to really sit down and talk to the rock as he was used to. About half and hour later, he'd come back, only to find he couldn't really concentrate on his carving anymore. So he started sorting out the apartment and the tower of stuff the brats had left there the day before. 

Kakashi felt three very inquisitive pairs of eyes staring and sighed. 

"What?" 

"So you _are_ serious, aren't you?" Asuma blew a neat ring of smoke out of the window, looking non-challant. "About this whole thing, you know, _him_. You're serious." 

"Am I _ever_ serious about anything?" Kakashi grinned wryly, challengingly. 

"Aw, Kakashi, don't be like that," the Kunoichi patted his knee, "we worry about you, you know? It's good to know you've got someone." 

"Even if that someone's a _man_, and one with a temper from hell and the balls to hit Morino," Genma added somewhat darkly, glaring aimlessly around the room. In a fluid motion, Kurenai's hand slid from Kakashi's knee to jab Genma's chest, nearly knocking him off the couch's arm. "What! Just saying, jeez." 

"He's a friend," Kakashi shrugged carefully, a measured movement that fooled no one in the room; "I take care of my friends." 

"Bullshit," Asuma said quite congenially, "_we_'re your friends and you sooner drop us off into the hospital than play nurse for us. You want into his pants." 

"_Asuma_," Kurenai looked reproving. 

"Arg, _please_," Genma looked aghast, "_strongly_ heterosexual man here, please cut off the mental images." Three dry, cutting snorts answered his pleas, Kakashi going as far as to flicker a tiny, shiny rock – which one of Iruka's youngest students had brought as a good luck amulet – at him. Genma looked unrepentant. "Sorry, my friend, I came for the gossip, not for the details." 

"Well, _I_ want details," Kurenai sat back comfortably, snuggling against Iruka's obscenely plush couch and grinned almost lasciviously. "Spill." 

Kakashi wondered _why_ he was friends with them, when the only thing they did was turning his life upside down more often than not. He grinned. It probably had something to do with the fact he would die of boredom otherwise. He gave them a vaguely smug, very aloof look. 

"Well…" 

-- 

"Rethink your argument," Kurenai said calmly and serenely, though the way she was clicking her nails was quite threatening, "and bear in mind that any mention to my gender will result in a painful, not to mention _final_ assault on your… virility." 

Asuma was still perched on the windowsill, pretending to be aiming the butt of his cigarette on the people passing by, six stories below. Genma was still perching on the arm of the couch, playing with the senbon in his mouth. Kakashi was still sitting on the couch, sorting through cards, although the giant pile was now neatly distributed into two smaller ones. And the three of them were thinking along the same lines, how to get the irked Kunoichi in their presence to cook them lunch without being thoroughly emasculated. Literally. 

Kakashi couldn't do anything beyond tea. His tea was glorious, nirvana in each sip, but anything more solid was beyond his abilities and it was a generally known fact that starvation was a less painful way of dying. Genma was decent, but only if you didn't mind eating things raw. Vegetables weren't all that bad, but the orally fixated man just _loved_ raw meat. And aside from Anko, no one really enjoyed blood along their filet. Asuma _could_ cook and he was competent, but he had a knack for spicy things and things that bordered on _burnt_. The man could eat wasabi like a child ate chocolate and it wasn't really a good idea to share his meals unless you were prepared to drink a glass of water for every mouthful. And it was… crunchy, always. Given the nature of their chat so far – much to Genma's outrage – crunchy things weren't all that good in the mental image department. 

"Well, you—" 

A knock interrupted Asuma's attempt to soothe her. Kakashi's eyes flickered to the clock. He turned a sickly, greenish white. It was half past two. Yesterday, around this time, he'd suffered through a riot, helpless and unable to defend himself. He doubted any of his current companions would deal any better. Besides, if there were any more presents, he was going to go _insane_. 

Raidou appeared on the doorway, grinning widely. 

"Hey!" He peeked inside, eyes bright as he noticed the awkwardly perched Jounins in the living room. "Look what I have!" He raised a plastic bag with enough take out to feed a small army – it was barely enough for them, "And look what I found on my way here!" 

"Screw that, look what _I_'ve got!" Anko appeared behind him, waving two bags with beer, eyes bright and maniac, as usual. 

They were received with all the greatest honors. 

Meaning, basically, that Asuma _did_ throw his cigarette out the window, Genma hopped off the couch and Kakashi knocked all his painstakingly organized cards off the table without a care. Kurenai high-five'd with Anko and soon they were sitting around, sharing gossip and eating. 

No one paid Kakashi's bare face any mind, no one in their little group did, ever, because it was the sort of quirk among Jounins that was acknowledged the first time and ignored afterwards. They were friends, a tight group, unusually large by most standards, but they fitted well. Each had his or her own story, his or her own closet filled to the brim with skeletons that were shared occasionally. Some things like were trivial, others were treasured secrets, dark corners that few knew about and were protected lethally. But they've been together for so long, worked together for so long, shared living quarters and clustered refugees in missions… it only served to oil their relationships and make them better. 

There had been wars and the Kyubi and themselves. There were little to no family left, no clans; they were the survivors of their own Genin teams, survivors to the end. And they had gravitated to each other, found solace the long nights they couldn't sleep because they could still remember and someone to share a drink with and snort at the silliest points of life. Being a Jounin was hard. Being a Jounin meant striving constantly to be the best. Being a Jounin was full of complexities and incongruent quirks that made sense only to another Jounin, to someone who felt and saw and went through like with the same objectives as they did. 

Kakashi's face, Anko's curse seal, Raidou's scars, Kurenai's eyes, Asuma's smoking tick, Genma's cravings; no one asked about them when they came up, and everyone cherished the knowledge when the stories leaked out late at night, between a sip of sake and the next. There were other Jounins out there, others who had suffered and lost precious things, but they didn't understand them, didn't belong with them, and thus stayed away from the eclectic group that strived on to survive. 

Always survive. 

"Fucking rats." 

All movement in the living came to a screeching halt as Iruka's ticked off voice came from the doorway. 

"Need to call the exterminator," the Chuunin stumbled, asleep, to the bathroom, "fucking vermin." 

The door closed behind him and a raucous, choking laughter rose among the Jounin when they realized he _was_ asleep. Kakashi didn't laugh; he shook his head, set his beer on the table, sorted out his way and disappeared into the bathroom after Iruka. He was quite, quite familiar by now with his little antics after he went to the bathroom, and really, he didn't want Iruka to face the crowd of _hyenas_ out there. They would never let him live it down. 

It didn't mean they were going to let _him_ live it down. 

"Don't take too long, 'Kashi!" Anko cooed him, "It's not right to take advantage!" 

Kakashi gave them all a nice and friendly middle finger and a dirty look as he dragged Iruka back to his bedroom, while the school teacher rambled on and on about needing to shoot the goddamn birds. 

When he came back, they were exactly as he had left them, making a riot. 

Before he could complain, however, there was a knock on the door. Everyone fell silent as Kakashi made his way to the door. 

"The only thing we need," he said, in a fairly acrid, reluctantly amused tone, "is Ibiki coming here to… why, hi, Ibiki-sama." 

The scarred man arched an eyebrow as the group began laughing again. Kakashi just stared at him with that neutral, passive air that was practically brotherhood between them. Anko and Raidou were well on their way to getting drunk, judging by the volume they were reaching, although with Anko one could never tell. 

"Came to join the party, Ibiki_-sama_?" Genma asked rather boldly – Ibiki wasn't going to _kill_ him, none of them, unless they went and did something really stupid like becoming missing Nin, but he was _scary_ and you didn't tease the man unless you had a certain amount of alcohol in your veins. 

"If I wanted to see trained monkeys," Ibiki said in a tone dry enough to make them yearn for a glass of water, "I'd go to the circus. I was wondering if you had my medic Nin around." 

"Haven't seen her since she left this morning," Kakashi replied, loudly enough to cover up for Asuma's potentially violence-inducing jab at Ibiki's wording. 

"Hn." Ibiki looked at the group with a speculative glance. 

Kakashi was very glad he wasn't holding anything remotely alcoholic at the moment and that he'd thought to put his mask back in place to answer the door; he knew that look. It meant things would _not_ be pleasant. 

"Are you enjoying your lunch, children?" He was their boss, nominally or otherwise, they knew it. No one stood up to him, ever; it was just… not done. 

"Quite," Kurenai slurred as she raised her bottle to make a toast. Ibiki smiled, they froze. 

"Then it's a shame it's over. You and you, back to the tower, there've been a few incidents during the exams we need you to look over." Anko and Asuma bleached white, and then disappeared in a puff. "You two," Genma and Raidou held stll and didn't whimper, "there's an A-rank waiting for you, it's been waiting all morning, so get back there before it grows nasty and goes S on you." They were gone before he finished the sentence. "And you two," Kurenai and Kakashi stood up a bit straighter, "_clean_ this fucking mess, for crying out loud, it's ridiculous." 

He turned on his heel – one day, Kakashi _would_ learn how the hell he did that without looking moronic – and slammed the door as he left. 

"I think he likes Iruka," Kurenai said slowly, relaxing back into the couch she had just vacated, "and you, as well." 

"Hn," the Copy Nin replied, looking over at the mess they've made and began composing a thank-you note in his mind. Really, Ibiki was such a god-send when he wanted to be... scary, dastardly god-send, but a god-send, nevertheless. Shrugging pragmatically, he turned to the kitchen. 

"I hear he's betting a year's worth of salary with the Hokage about the future of your marital status," Kurenai grinned when her friend slammed face first against the doorway. 

They set to work, afterwards, without any comments regarding anyone's sex life and were done by four. Kakashi made tea and Kurenai finally left to look after her own students. She'd given them the day off, but she loved them too much to not meet with them once every day. 

The apartment was clean, the various presents for Iruka were ordered and there were no hints left to prove there had been a little Jounin party going on a few hours before. Kakashi managed to reheat some of the leftovers without completely destroying them and prepared for the hardest task of the day: waking and feeding Iruka. 

-- 

Iruka woke up bright and early on Saturday morning. He felt… a good five years younger than before, and considering the life he'd lead, those were some quite stressing five years. He threw the covers off, stretched soundly and promptly made his bed. He rummaged for clothes and went to the bathroom to get a long, steaming shower to finish kicking the kinks off his shoulders, but he found himself staring in fascination at his couch. 

His couch was generally known by those lucky mortals that had ever tried it as a sinful thing. It was old, it was rundown and it looked…well, about to fall apart. But it was plush and comfortable and one could sit down and spend _hours_ doing nothing while sitting on it. Iruka also knew it made for a comfortable bed. 

Kakashi knew it too, but it was oddly endearing to see the Jounin sprawled carelessly on it, his shirt, mask and vest thrown awkwardly on a corner as he buried his nose against the ugly beige fabric that shouldn't have really seen the light of day. Iruka smiled and turned to the bathroom in silence. 

"Gn, you awake?" A slurring, drowsy voice called to him and he found Kakashi twisted around funnily on the couch. "Please tell me you're actually awake." 

"I am," Iruka gave a few steps towards the Copy Nin, then snorted softly when said Copy Nin finished twisting around and found himself sprawled on the floor. Iruka knelt by his head, smiling softly, "so you did stay the whole ride, didn't you? Thank you. I'm going to get a shower and get dressed… then I'm inviting you to breakfast. Sounds good?" 

Kakashi looked at him, _really_ look at him. With his hair down and mussed from sleep, still wearing nothing but those blasted pants that were going to give him nightmares for a life time or two. With the scar that crossed over his chest, from that attack weeks before and knowing there was that scarily _large_ scar on his back, and the one his nose and all those tiny ones he'd noticed the last two days he'd spent watching him sleep. Most importantly, he looked at the warm smile and the kind eyes and felt that really, having put with brawling children and crazy sleepwalking habits and even an impromptu Jounin teasing session was really, really worth it. Those three days from hell, they'd definitely been worth _this_. 

Kakashi smiled back, and was glad the mask was _not_ on, so Iruka could see it. 

"Yeah," he said, "that sounds pretty cool right now." 


	15. Lesson Fourteen: Warmth

**Training Kakashi.**

_Lesson Fourteen: Warmth._

"So, _why_ do your students love you so darn much, anyway?" Kakashi looked at Iruka as the teacher finished his tea.

The little restaurant had served home made food that was a tad bit sweeter than what Kakashi would have preferred, but it had been free and it had been hot and he had really appreciated it. To his surprise, Iruka snorted dryly.

"They don't _love_ me," the Chuunin smirked, "but I'm a saint compared to my substitute."

"Substitute."

"Come to think about it, you're young enough, don't you remember Grandma Asuka?" Iruka tilted his head to the side, as if he were asking about the weather and not one of Kakashi's deepest childhood traumas.

He swallowed thickly.

Oh, he _remembered_ Grandma Asuka. That old retired shinobi with the missing right hand and wooden left leg. The wrinkled, stern-looking, sharp-eyed, yelling woman that had given a grand total of three hours of class before he'd decided that the sooner he graduated the sooner he'd be free from her evil, cruel antics. She was ruthless in her methods and merciless in regards to discipline and hard work. Perfection was barely acceptable, everything else was punishable. That frightful, tall figure, the wild gossip about her last stand on a battlefield and how she'd end up so disfigured, and her own stories about her past, frightful battles described in vivid detail to the last drop of blood, designed to make them tremble in fear...

She was the icon of old-school education, training future shinobi tough enough to withstand wars, demon foxes, politics, betrayal and whatnot. Intellectually, Kakashi could understand how the teachers of _that_ generation had been necessary and how Konoha was still standing because of it, but times had changed. And he still couldn't _eat_ strawberry pie without hearing her voice lecturing him from across time about his poor talents and his need to 'cut the umbilical cord', even if at age five, Kakashi hadn't been entirely sure what an umbilical cord was.

"Grandma Asuka? _She_'s your substitute?" The Copy Nin realized that all that pampering to get Iruka back on his feet hadn't been overreacting by the children. Hell, if _he_ had been given the choice between Iruka and that blasted woman from hell, he'd probably sold his soul all over.

"Actually, it started the other way around," Iruka smiled, amused, "she didn't like me all that much when I retired from active service and started teaching. A lot of people didn't like me around that time. But she said that I was too young, you know, I was what… eighteen? And she argued loudly and for anyone who wanted to listen that I had nearly no experience to pass on to future generations and… yeah, she didn't like me." Iruka was grinning wryly, even if he did wince a bit. "It got to me, eventually, and she stepped on a nerve and I blew a racket. I know, me and my temper, but she was impressed enough to let me take one of her groups. Naruto's group, actually. She thought the brat would drive me insane within a week and I'd quit. He _did_ drive me insane within an _hour_, but I made him graduate. Now she just subs for me when I'm sick or when I'm dragged off on a mission."

"She's very…_inspirational,_ I'll give you that." Kakashi shivered a little, "I think she was the reason I graduated so fast."

Iruka snorted and finished his tea, looking around distractedly.

Kakashi was looking happy-go-round as usual while he tried to sort out the new facts at his disposal. Iruka had _retired_? At _eighteen_? That… was very unusual, indeed. Shinobi retired by two things, early death or dismembering. You retired when you were unable to succeed in missions anymore and when you were only a weight to drag along by your team. Shinobi didn't _do_ retirement.

Iruka had retired at age eighteen. And he said it so candidly, so _calmly_. As if it weren't something scandalous, or unheard of. Maybe he'd been shamed. But if he'd been shamed, he wouldn't have been accepted as a teacher.

"Why did you retire?" Kakashi asked, softly, and regretting the question as soon as Iruka's eyes flashed cold for a second, before melting into a strangely apathic brown.

"Why do you wear the mask?" The teacher replied, challengingly, and it felt like the interrogation room again, distant, disproportionate, _angry_, but tightly leashed.

_Touché_.

--

"And this one says, and I quote," Kakashi's eyebrows crawled under his headband, "'_Get off your ass already, paperwork is piling.'_ You really know how to bring the best out in people. Didn't know you were working for him, either."

Iruka snorted. Loudly. _Very_ loudly. Although the note came from _Ibiki_, and not, as Kakashi had originally imagined, Tsunade. They had gone for breakfast and then back to Iruka's apartment, and not even once did Kakashi think about going on separate ways. He'd even managed to sneak not one, but two rather pleasant kisses on the unsuspecting teacher with only a bright blush and a weak protest in response. He'd tried to steer things away from unsavory subjects and managed to have a rather enjoyable time with him.

Kakashi acknowledged that when he'd pretty much dropped dead into Iruka's the first time; Iruka hadn't asked questions that, by all means, he had a right to ask. Now the roles were reversed, and after the near shock during their meal, Kakashi realized the Chuunin was expecting the same courtesy in return.

That sucked, because Kakashi was rather curious about the whole incident, but he decided he really wanted Iruka's companionship – and maybe more – a considerable amount more than that information. And it really couldn't be that bad, could it? His own history was filled with uglies he hadn't wanted to share with anyone.

"He's an asshole," Iruka plopped a small chocolate from one of the dozen boxes littering the living room into his mouth and snorted, "biggest asshole I've ever met."

"Bad blood?" Kakashi asked tentatively, not entirely sure he was allowed to ask, and a bit confused considering the fact he _had_ considered himself Ibiki's friend and the bastard had never sent him a get well card, not even when he was lying on a bed dying and in constant agony.

It wasn't really fair, Iruka gathered everyone's attention.

_Even mine._

"That's…" Iruka sighed. Suddenly, he wasn't feeling in the mood for chocolate anymore. "It's not a secret, it's just something that happened a very long time ago. I admire Ibiki-sama very much, Kakashi, he's an excellent ninja and he holds Konoha's safety at the top of his priorities. But his views on how to protect it differ greatly from mine."

"We all have different ways to protect Konoha."

Kakashi realized this was a Serious Matter, and stopped playing with a strange, sliding, multi-colored cube that had been left for Iruka with a 'to help you kill boredom!' note. He was sitting on that obscenely comfortable couch, not wearing his vest or his mask, sorting out through ridiculously embarrassing get-well cards and stealing a bit of chocolate in between the particularly _hideous_ ones.

"Yeah, we do," Iruka sighed again, sounding tired, "we all do."

--

"It's silly," Kakashi said after a long moment of silence; he tugged on the mask hanging loosely around his neck when Iruka looked up, "the mask. It's a silly reason."

The only sound in the living room was the clock ticking and their breathing. Kakashi took a deep breath; he had never told anyone this – and Gai didn't count, because he'd been _drunk_ then, drunk enough to cry along and_sing_ along and… yeah, it didn't count.

"My… my father made a mistake," he was looking at his hands, clenching and unclenching them slowly, "on a mission. And it was a very important mission for Konoha. He chose his friends over the mission and he shamed himself. It's stupid, but I couldn't shake the itching knowledge people were looking at _him_ when they talked to me. The sneers, the condescending tones. I don't look like my mother at all, you know? I had always been my father's son. Even after he… died, they still looked at him in me. So I figured that if they couldn't see my face they wouldn't see him, and then they wouldn't expect me to be him." Kakashi shrugged uncomfortably. "Then there was the war and the Kyubi and everyone pretty much forgot about it, but I was so used to it… it was part of who _I_ was, of what I wanted others to see instead of him. So it stayed. And I like it, really. It's fun to make people curious or to see my team come up with really fucked up plans to see what's underneath." Kakashi grinned wryly. "You know, if they asked nicely and didn't interrupt my reading, I think I would show them. But everyone just…_assumes_ things, and if I spent all my time correcting those assumptions, I would never finish my missions or my novels." He risked a look upwards. Iruka was giving him shaky smile. "So yeah, that's why I wear a mask. You know the big secret, tell anyone and I kill you, you know the drill."

Iruka hiccupped a laugh. Or maybe a sob. The next thing Kakashi knew was that he had been pulled against the Chuunin and his nose was resting quite comfortably against the black fabric of Iruka's shirt. He twisted around until he ended up between his legs, and returned the embrace a bit awkwardly. He even harbored one or two lascivious thoughts about the whole situation, but then, Iruka was running his hands soothingly over his back and Kakashi just… melted.

"Start purring and all bets are off."

--

"I don't like talking about the past," the teacher rumbled softly to the boneless heap of Jounin lying on him, very clearly not purring, because Iruka's threats were not something to be taken lightly. "It's… _silly_."

"You don't have to say anything if you don't want to," Kakashi resisted the urge to snuggle closer, "I'm just too curious for my own good."

"Ibiki and I used to work together."

Kakashi's little bubble bursted quite sharply at that and he sat back, away from that tantalizing embrace, and looked at the Chuunin with open curiosity. Iruka shrugged, looking mildly uncomfortable.

"My team was an intelligence gathering team. The main team would go and gather information and then we would go and obtain the juicy details. It was risky, dangerous, stressing and had Ibiki breathing down my neck when I was seventeen and wondering if I was good enough for the job. Simply put, I loved it." Iruka snorted. "Then the main team fucked it up and my team got caught in the aftermath. I tried to fix it and only screwed it up more. I survived, beaten up and exhausted enough to sleep for two weeks, but the rest of my team didn't make it. I got depressed, really, really depressed; like the stupid over-emotional idiot I am and Ibiki only made it worse when he chewed at me about how disappointed he was. I told him my team couldn't be disappointed in _him_, 'cause they were dead. After six months of doing nothing but D-rank, Ibiki told me he was going to, and I quote, 'fire my ass all the way to Earth Country' if I didn't drop the drama. I told him I wouldn't give him the satisfaction, so I quit." Kakashi found his way back to his deliciously awkward position pressed up against the Chuunin, face buried against Iruka's shirt. He nuzzled a little. "Sadaime was livid. He yelled, he asked, he threatened… then he dropped me into the Academy and told me to stop embarrassing my parents and my sensei with my childish behavior." Iruka chuckled. "And that's the sorry, pathetic story of how I ended up teaching the little brats for a living. When I got a moment to stop sulking, I realized I actually liked it and I did have a moderate talent for it, so I stayed."

"I'm sure the bribes have nothing to do with it."

Kakashi was grinning. It was the same damned expression the Jounin seemed to use to weasel himself out of basically _anything_ and break all sorts of dangerous tension around him, except that without the mask it looked… rueful. Sort of. The forehead protector was still covering the sharingan, but Iruka caught the tip of a scar just underneath it. That was a story he'd like to hear, one that truly piqued his curiosity, but unlike Kakashi, he _could_ rein the impulse to ask. They'd said enough already.

Lazily, Iruka reached for another chocolate.

"Maybe."

Kakashi kissed him, arduously, slowly. He stole half the chocolate and looked unrepentant.

Iruka bit him teasingly and kissed back.

--

"This would be a perfect moment to blush, stutter and tell me to go away," the Copy Nin mused as he moved languidly over the Chuunin.

Iruka did blush as if he'd just realized the position they'd spent most of the day in, and the scar on his nose threatened to disappear under it. But he just curled his body teasingly, kissed Kakashi again and gave the Jounin a half-lidded grin.

"This would be a marvelous moment to move this to a bed."

Kakashi groaned, buried his face against the strong neck and _ground_ his hips. Iruka moaned softly, hands clenching on the loose black shirt.

"You do realize you're not going to get rid of me," the Jounin nuzzled the neck purposely, "not if I actually get what I want. I'm an unhealthily possessive dog."

"Hatake Kakashi, _the_ pervert Nin, trying to talk me _out_ of sex?" A hand found its way underneath the Jounin's shirt, strong fingers massaging the tense muscles of his lower back. Kakashi's breath hitched suspiciously and he pushed back against them. "The world is ending."

"I like to give ample warning," Kakashi found the tendon underneath Iruka's jaw where his neck melted into it and _sucked_, "that's just how nice I am."

"Nh, _nice_, right." Iruka snorted and tugged on Kakashi's shirt purposely.

"Is this a good moment to point out Anko's get-well gift?"

Iruka realized he had Kakashi's shirt in his hands, that Kakashi was kneeling between his legs,_shirtless_, and that he was talking about the bottle of _lube_ that had been partly hidden under the stack of get-well cards and which had almost given him an aneurism when he saw it.

Iruka realized as well that he _was_ going to actually go along with it and _do it_.

He wondered why he wasn't in the least perturbed.

"Anko's," the teacher said doubtfully, fingers taking full advantage of Kakashi's sensitive waist. The Jounin squirmed a little, "definitely not yours."

"Definitely," the Copy Nin murmured softly, slipping Iruka's shirt upwards, trying to return the favor.

Iruka's skin was of such a _pretty_color, Kakashi thought distractedly, a deeper shade than his own almost sickly pale tone, tanned into a healthy bronze hue that was just asking to be licked. Who was he to deny it? Muscles tensed and slid under the surface as a tongue slid quite confidently over them, following a capricious path as the shirt slowly inched upwards. And, oh, would you look at that, a nice, perky nipple standing in his path… what was Kakashi supposed to do? _Ignore_ it?

"_Fuck_," Iruka's hands found themselves on his hair, tugging contradictorily as if to pull him close and push him away.

"Sensitive?" The Copy Nin asked with smug amusement as he held the tiny bud between his teeth. He squeezed it softly to prove his point, Iruka arched off jerkily. "_Very_ sensitive." He tugged at it gently, keeping in mind his teeth _were_ a bit sharper than normal and just teasing with the ghost of pain. He hummed in agreement when Iruka's breath got raspy and hitched, "I like it."

"_Bastard_," the teacher groaned in a low pitch as Kakashi started sucking on it, his tongue pressing and lapping more consistently.

Iruka's hands clenched erratically on the pale back, fingers twitching. He _was_ sensitive, damnit; the bastard didn't have to _abuse_ the knowledge. Forcing himself to move, to get a distraction from the intoxicating pleasure slowly spreading through his body like smoke curls, Iruka slid his hands downwards. He'd turned the great Sharingan Kakashi to mush effortlessly with just a few brushes before, he would do it again; he just had to find the right place to_rub_ and then…

Kakashi pulled back abruptly,_squeaking_.

Iruka blinked out of his little pleasure heaven to see the Copy Nin, the _great_ Sharingan Kakashi flail a little and fall of the couch with a thud. Iruka bursted out laughing helplessly. It didn't really matter that he was sporting a very obvious erection, that he was aroused to the point of _madness_. Kakashi was ticklish and he _squeaked_.

"Shut up," the mismatched eyed Jounin nearly whined, rolling onto his back to glare at the ceiling. "Ain't that fucking funny."

"You squeak." Iruka was banging his head against the arm of the couch, hysteric. "You_squeak_, like…" he fumbled for a word, a synonym, an _animal_, "like a bloody guinea pig!"

"You're hard, you're flushed, you're needy and you have your shirt twisted around your neck, if someone should be laughing, it _really_ shouldn't be you."

Iruka shrugged off his shirt, chuckling still at the huffing, peevish tone.

"Better?" He twisted around to look down at the man sprawled on the floor.

"Get down here, already!"

Iruka winced a little as hands settled on his shoulders and _pulled_. He bumped a shoulder on the low table and his knees protested being dropped so roughly. He would have probably been relatively ticked about the whole ordeal, hadn't Kakashi chosen to catch his mouth with his own in a very distracting, infuriatingly slow kiss. Iruka forgot to be annoyed at being manhandled and grew exasperated, instead, at the painstakingly slow pace Kakashi was indulging in. One of his hands clenched spasmodically against the couch's side, fisting the old, loose fabric of it tightly, while the other landed on the edge of the low table, arms straining to keep him off the Jounin.

"Tease," Iruka groaned softly when the calloused hands ran down his chest and began to toy with his pants.

"Tell me you don't like it," Kakashi finally, _finally_ got to _un_do the blasted pants, instead of fixing them back in place. He slid the dark fabric down, taking the underwear with it and smirked teasingly when he felt Iruka's hardness fully.

"_Fuck_, I think," Iruka said a bit breathlessly, elbows touching Kakashi's shoulders as he ran his fingers over the unruly, spiky strands, "that we need to get undressed."

"It's a marvelous and very sensible suggestion, yes," the Copy Nin agreed easily, untangling his hands and looping his arms around Iruka's waist, "best idea you've ever had, really."

-- 

Iruka groaned with that delicious morning-after warmth pooling in his belly that only a night of wild, reckless, absolutely mind-blowing sex could produce. He shifted a little and sighed deeply, knowing sleep was not going to come back and that he really, really needed to pee. Maybe even get a shower. Maybe. His internal clock informed him tartly that it was Sunday already, that the sun was out already and that he had gotten very thoroughfully laid the night before. It also informed him that it was about goddamn time. Iruka opened his eyes slowly, blinking a bit at the odd brightness of the room and thought, absently, that he really didn't remember ever getting to the bedroom the night – _afternoon_ - before.

Kakashi was lying on top of him, arms folded over Iruka's chest as he rested his bony chin on them. Both eyes were visible, half lidded in a content expression that was best fitted for a cat than a Jounin that claimed to love all things dog, but which was strangely breathtaking in and of itself.

Kakashi smiled.

"Hey."

Iruka ached blissfully all over.

"What are you doing?" He reached a hand and tangled his fingers on the messy white hair, scratching the back of Kakashi's head as he would do a cat. He was not particularly surprised when he let out an eerily sounding rumble from deep within his chest.

"Watching you sleep," the Copy Nin said lazily, "you're cute when you sleep."

Fingers tug him forwards and he went willingly, savoring the languid kiss. Kakashi couldn't _not_ be up at dawn, it was infuriating and useful and oh so annoying, but it had been set in him very early on. When he was still a punctual, solemn child and he still listened to his mother comment tiredly that he was too much serious for a child. Kakashi couldn't help it, he rose with the sun, and there was no way of beating his overactive mind back to slumber once he opened his eyes. Of course, that morning, he'd woken up sprawled on an unfamiliar bed, with one Umino Iruka snoring softly below him and it had taken him good five minutes to beat the stupid, goofy grin off his face. It was helpless; Kakashi knew he was here to stay. The only thing that would change that would be, of course, the Chuunin sleeping under him and the certain knowledge he'd go if asked, no matter how much he didn't want to. So Kakashi spent the next five hours making himself comfortable on the warm body, trying to categorize how many 'awkward' there were possible for the moment his current bed partner woke up. He entertained silly, tragic, comical, hilarious, pathetic, angry, outraged and even denial in his list of possibilities, but they all seemed to disappear into thin air when Iruka smiled back at him.

"Mmm," he shivered a bit, and then twisted his neck so he could look at Kakashi in the eye, "'m hungry."

Kakashi grinned.

"Yeah, me too."

And that was it.


	16. Lesson Fifteen: Discipline

**Training Kakashi.**

_Lesson Fifteen: Discipline._

"I don't care if I have to starve to pay for it, but I'm _so_ buying you soundproofing for your walls." 

Iruka juggled with the vase in his hands, blushing furiously and muttering a few choice swearwords. He turned to glare darkly at the Chuunin currently eating apple pie in his kitchen. From her perch on the counter, Midori shrugged. 

"Seriously, you two are _wild_," she shuddered a little, "I'd not be surprised if you turned half this building gay just by the sound of it. Lord knows I wanted in by the third time." 

"_Midori!_" 

"And from friend to friend, 'Ruka, I wouldn't mind in _your_ pants after a round or two of sake, but considering who's the other half of the equation…" She screwed her mouth into a grimace. "That's just _ew_. You've taken a shower already, right? 'Cause I don't want to catch _his_ germs." 

She caught the kunai sent halfheartedly in her direction and grinned. Teasing Iruka to an aneurism was the best thing ever, really. She was just glad 'the other half of the equation' had already vacated the apartment by them time she deemed it safe to check on her best friend, because she wasn't entirely sure what she'd have done then. 

Probably throw a handful of sharp, pointy objects in Kakashi's general direction. 

"How _old_ are you?" The teacher grumbled in annoyance, heaving a bit as he moved the couch to the opposite wall, between the kitchen door and the bathroom door, so that it faced the window directly. "You don't like him, fine, I get it. He doesn't like you either, but he doesn't bitch about you when we're alone!" 

"No, because he's too busy screwing your brains out to do it," pause, "because he _is_ the one doing the screwing, right? That's as much as I could guess through sound alone. Anyway, I can't exactly use that tactic either, you're not my type. Though you _do_ have a nice ass," Iruka slipped and slammed himself nose first against the wooden floor, face blazing, "at least I give the idiot that much credit, he's got good taste." 

Iruka scrambled back to his feet and stalked to the kitchen, hands clenching on the doorway so he could contain the impulse to choke her to death. 

"Get _out_!" 

Midori weighted his glare and realized easily the flush was due to sheer mortification and not true anger. Thus, she raised her plate, grinned and then took another mouthful of it. 

"When I'm done with my pie, honey." 

"That's _my_ pie, for starters!" Iruka's fingers twitched, but whether it was because he wanted to rip his hair off a bit or throttle her a little was unknown. 

"Sharing is caring," Midori said wisely, nodding to herself, "and we all know you _love_ me." 

"The only time I'll love you is when you're a stinking corpse!" He stormed into the room, eyes nearly glowing with annoyance and a deep blush set over his features that wasn't leaving them any time soon. 

"Aw, _shit_, Iruka," Midori gagged a little, "that's necrophilia!" Iruka spluttered. "I'm trying to _eat_ here." 

He lounged at her; she slithered out of the way smoothly. Iruka ended up sprawled over the counter. Midori ended up leaning against the doorway, plate of pie and fork still in hand. 

"Although if _he_ is into it, lemme know, I'll be glad to help with the whole dead thing." 

Iruka gave a little frustrated sound and slammed his head against the wall a bit. 

"Could you _please_ take the food and _leave_?" He twisted around to give her a pathetic, half begging look, "_please_." 

"You're no fun," she pouted a bit. "Anyway, I've got work to do, even if it's Sunday… _bah_, see you later, jackass, thanks for the pie!" 

A kunai embedded itself on the wood behind the spot where her head had been before she disappeared into a puff. Iruka considered the therapeutic value of a nice, long scream. 

"_ARG!_" 

-- 

Lee was hurt again. 

Gaara hadn't asked about him, but when he'd gone to see how his siblings had done in the forest, Kankuro mentioned it. He kept looking nervously at him, half expecting him to go into one of his pre-Naruto rages against the world at large, though Gaara couldn't hope to fathom why. Temari had excused herself rather quickly as well, although she looked distracted, rather than afraid of him. Gaara knew his sister trusted him. Not why or how, but he was sure of it. Regardless, Kankuro had told him it would probably be right of him to go and see how Lee was. 

Thus, he found himself contemplating a rather bizarre scene from the doorway of the infirmary where Lee was being treated for the wounds he acquired during the forest trial. 

"A shinobi's body is his best weapon!" Midori scolded Lee darkly, fastening the bandages around his chest. "You're pretty darn lucky that hit only bruised you, it could have broken your ribs and done a number on your internal organs." 

"I'm sorry, Medic-Nin-sama," Lee bowed so sharply and with so much energy that he upset his bandages and caused Midori to narrow her eyes in annoyance. 

"My name's _Midori_. Flat. Simple. Common. Uncomplicated." She grabbed him by the neck and kept him still while she tried to savage her work. "If I needed a suffix attached to it, I'd run for Hokage. I'm not. Now shut up and stay _still_. And for anything that's sacred, _stop_ trying to give the current Hokage a coronary. I swear she was livid when she saw how you came out." 

"I am sorry," Lee said as he hung his neck, "but I could not _not_ win! But I will train hard today and tomorrow and on Wednesday, I will come out unscathered from the confrontation! If I don't, I will run three hundred laps around—" 

Midori stuffed a roll of bandages in his mouth. 

"You know what, shut up. You're making my head _hurt_, just by listening to it," she glared darkly when all he did was shrug, "get off my bench and get out of my office. And remember what I said, _or else_." 

"Yes, Midori-sama!" Lee bowed again, arms tight against his sides, the impromptu gag held tightly in his right hand. Then he noticed Gaara giving him a calculative look from the sideways and dropped the bandages as he all but ran to the redhead. "Gaara! Where have you been?!" 

Midori rolled her eyes skywards and started packing up her supplies as the bouncing boy dragged the subdued redhead away in a rather undignified way. _Why_ the redhead wasn't killing him yet she couldn't know, but she brushed them off her mind with ease. Irritably, she stuffed everything back into cabinets and drawers. It wasn't _fair_, damnit! It was Sunday, her day off. She had hoped to spend the whole day teasing Iruka until he either spilled the whole story or burst a blood vessel. Stupid Chuunin exams and stupid Genin getting half-killed in it. 

"That was very ironic, you realize." 

Midori turned to find Ibiki giving her a risen eyebrow. The scarred man had probably been standing there the whole time, cloaking his presence as per his goddamn habit. 

"What," she asked dryly, "the fact _I_ just lectured someone on self-control or the fact _Rock_ Lee had his ass kicked by a _Rock_ Nin?" 

"Both, actually." He was laughing at her, she just _knew_ it. Ibiki's face remained hard and impassive. "Don't pack yet, there's one of _them_ you have to fix as well. It'd be… _suspicious_ if you didn't." 

"So you're here to tell me I'm supposed to be nice to them?" Midori snorted. "That's discrimination! I'm equally snide to everyone!" 

"Equally obnoxious, too, so kindly shut up and do your work." 

Miffed and properly chastised by the icy tone, Midori nodded resignedly. 

"Yes, Ibiki-sama." 

It was going to be a _long_ evening. 

-- 

Kakashi flipped a page of his book ceremoniously, ignoring the bewildered, openly curious stares he was being subjected to. Some times, having a preference for a roof in which to sunbathe and read Come Come Paradise had its disadvantages. Like the fact his friends had, eventually, picked up on it and dubbed it unofficially "Kakashi's favorite spot for sunbathing and reading porn". It meant they knew where to find him most of the time, even when he wasn't feeling particularly willing to be found and even when the sun was waxing in the distance already, so not much sunbathing could be done. He concentrated on the lines, forcing the mental image because if he didn't acknowledge them, they would leave. Eventually. And it probably wasn't anything terribly urgent, since they hadn't come waving scrolls with the Hokage's seal on them and neither had Ibiki come to pester him about it. 

Genma chewed around the senbon, moving it from left to right, giving him a piercing, calculative stare. He'd been the last to arrive, dragged by an obnoxiously loud Anko with a cry of "here, _look!_" 

Kakashi continued reading – _…her tiny, delicate hands clenching on the wild mane of white hair with a shrill cry that announced the world her pleasure…_ – and reminded himself that he really couldn't murder any of them without a legitimate reason. 

He was in a good mood, anyways, what with the fact he'd managed to get laid _again_ this morning before leaving Iruka's apartment and a cluster of nosy Jounin were not enough to shatter his mood. Put a dent on it, maybe, but nothing else. 

"Yeah, you're right," Genma said after a long moment, looking both pleased with himself and disturbed beyond words, "he _did_ got lucky." 

"_Ha!_" Anko cried triumphantly, "Pay the girl, losers, _pay_ the girl." 

It was getting to be a really, really _big_ dent on his mood, though. 

There was a bit of grumbling while a Asuma paid his and Kurenai's debt – not because they were, god forbid, _together_, of course, but because she didn't have her wallet with her at the moment and he was nothing if not a gentleman; but it wasn't like they were _dating_ or they _liked_ each other. No, of course not. Raidou paid without even looking at what he was doing, deeply engrossed in the task of staring at the silent Jounin. 

He continued reading, unperturbed. 

"Ne, Kakashi," Kurenai tilted her head to the side, poking his forehead protector with a sharp, long nail, "who topped?" 

"Oh hell, not this _again_!" Genma groaned loudly, but was ignored when Asuma snorted loudly. 

"He did," the chain smoker affirmed confidently, "just _look_ at him, that's the pose of a stud. Besides, I don't think Iruka _could_ top anyone. Even if he tried." 

"Dunno," Raidou commented off handily, eyes never leaving the top of Kakashi's bowed head. "He's pretty rough when situation calls for it." Suddenly, all eyes turned to him, narrowed in speculation, or, in Kakashi's case, deadly intent. "In _missions_!" The scarred man choked a bit nervously, his voice taking a squeaky, high pitched tone, "Missions! I mean he's rough in missions! I've never slept with him, I wouldn't know in the bedroom!" 

"It's always the quiet ones, you know," Anko finished counting her money and slipped it into her coat, "the more proper and quiet they look, the kinkier they are in bed." 

Kakashi. Continued. Reading. 

Genma muttered something about _her_ being a prude in bed if that was true and got an elbow lodged between his ribs for his efforts. 

"C'mon, Kakashi," Kurenai crouched to be eye-level with him, "we need _details_, how are we gonna stop Anko from ripping us off if you don't help?" 

"Though please tell me he was _awake_, at least," Asuma smirked around his cigarette, "'cause man, those were five hundred and my respect I put on your self-control." 

Kakashi slammed his book shut loudly, standing up with deadly grace. He gave them all a flat, unamused glare and opened his mouth to deliver them their due, when a smokescreen and a handful of multicolored flashes stopped him. 

"Kakashi! My one and greatest Rival! I have come to challenge you! With the—" 

He'd honestly never been happier to see Gai's green-spandex-clad ass in his life. 

"Training ground," Kakashi grabbed Gai's wrist and dragged the bewildered man down with him as he jumped off the roof, "Taijutsu match, _now_." 

Sharingan Kakashi and Konoha's Beautiful Green Beast disappeared in the distance, leaving behind a group of curious, speculating Jounin that entertained themselves watching them. 

"So," Anko asked deviously, "who wants to bet Iruka's too sore to go to work tomorrow?" 

Genma whimpered a bit against the raging mental images and asked _why_ to no one in particular. 

-- 

Asuma lost another forty to Anko, though, because Monday morning, Iruka woke up bright and early. He showered, dressed, bumped into his couch when he forgot he'd rearranged his living quarters – _again _– and then ate a tasty breakfast from the various leftovers that his students had seen fit to leave for him while he was unconscious. According to what Kakashi had said, the Genin had been allowed to leave the forest the day before some time during the afternoon, so he'd had to go and check on Sakura even if she was currently fostered to Asuma's care. Iruka was glad, though, because he knew Asuma was punctual at least, and he cared very much for his students, thus Sakura hadn't been left standing outside the gates for hours just because her Jounin sensei happened to be a lazy, porn-addicted idiot. 

_And a biter_, Iruka thought a bit irked as he looked at his neck in the distorted reflection of his spoon. A rather large, violent, impossible-to-miss hickey was adorning the spot where his jaw met his neck. That seemed to be a favorite spot for Kakashi to bite on. With a sigh, he rubbed the bridge of his nose to try and dispel the furious blush that had sized him and grabbed his vest. As he zipped it up, Iruka swore he could _see_ the myriad of scratches, bites and bruises under his clothes, and worried a bit that someone _else_, like his _students_, could see it too. 

He thanked the gods above that there were no Hyuuga's in his class this year, because he wasn't sure he'd be able to stand in front of class and attempt to teach them something if he knew one of them could to see the blatant bite-mark on his right hip. 

All in all, the little brats knew there was _something_ off with their teacher, because they tested his patience and good will a bit too much. Even if they _had_ spent three days under Grandma Asuka's tutelage. Her influence in them was always disastrous and they always seemed to take off their frustration on him afterwards, but this was _ridiculous_. 

"_Silence!_" Iruka roared angrily, eyes narrowed dangerously until the class quickly scrambled to their seats. 

He gave them one last _Look of Doom_ and, huffing, opened the scroll to start role call. His eyes threatened to pop out of his sockets, his jaw fell and his nose began trickling blood. Iruka rolled up the paper with a barely contained hitch in his breathing and forcefully held the nosebleed in check. 

Kakashi was dead. 

"Everyone's present!" He announced in a squeaky voice, smiling widely and crushing the scroll between his fingers. 

Kakashi. Was. _So_. Dead. 

"But sensei, you didn't—" 

"I said everyone is present, Moegi," Iruka glared at the solicitous girl darkly and viciously, the smile never wavering, "that's disrespect to your teacher, if you were on a mission, that would be mutiny!" He let the words sink and ruthlessly ignored the need to wince as the girl's face fell. 

Kakashi was _so **fucking** dead_! Because who, if not the annoying, know-it-all lazy ass of a Jounin would switch Iruka's usual role call scroll with a obscene illustration from the Come Come Paradise series in full color and with close up to the 'good' bits in each corner? One had been enough, it had been at home and no one had _seen_ him. But here? At school? In front of the bloodsucking, opportunist _brats_ he had to teach? 

_Screw killing him_, Iruka thought furiously as he started writing on the blackboard, _see if he ever gets to lay a finger on me again!_

It was a good thing his students didn't find out about the scroll – oh, he had to buy something _nice_ for the head of the Hyuuga clan to thank them for being such a tight-knit, scarce clan – and that they didn't get to see his absolutely murderous expression, because that would have proven to be disastrous. Still, he gave out fourteen detentions – six of them to Konohamaru – and was glad to see them go for the day. 

He still had a Jounin to skin alive before he reported to Ibiki and got back to work in the Administrative building. 

-- 

"This brings complications." 

Gaara stared through the windows in Tsunade's office, gourd off his back in a sign of acknowledgement to his fellow Kage. The blonde snorted loudly. 

"'Complications' does not even _begin_ to describe it," she swallowed the _'kid'_ that was threatening to spill out of her mouth, but only because she was too well versed in the complexities of politics and because she wasn't really in the mood to start a fight with a known psychopath over something so trivial. So she groused to herself and continued with the strict protocol. "What is the opinion of the Sand's Kazekage?" 

"It is Leaf where the Chuunin exams are being held, the Leaf's Hokage should take the decision on her own." 

Tsunade clenched her teeth and felt a vein throbbing in her temple. The bored monotone was irking and the lack of inflection made it impossible to judge the redhead's mood or if he was receptive for her to talk right back at him. Really, it had taken an ungodly amount of paperwork and diplomatic chit-chat to establish a firmer alliance with the Sand; she couldn't risk it all just because their chosen Kazekage was an ill-mannered brat. 

"It is Sand's Kazekage they are threatening as well." 

Gaara snorted and turned to give Tsunade a blank look with the barest hint of amusement. His eyes slid to the gourd in a not so subtle motion. She sighed again. 

"The point is not if they _can_ kill the Sand's Kazekage," the Fifth wondered for the umpteenth time why she had accepted the job in the first place, "the point is they said they _would_ try." 

"Would the Leaf's Hokage prefer the Sand's Kazekage to deal with this minor detail?" His eyes were eerie, an unnaturally bright color and the fact they were rimmed by the sign of the beast within him only made it worse. 

"The Leaf's Hokage would prefer the Sand's Kazekage to stop playing with riddles and _help_ her solve this _major_ inconvenience," Tsunade rested her fists over her desk, leaning forward a bit to glare at him. "She's much too old and much too pretty to be stressing herself like this." 

Gaara gave her a tiny smirk. It was barely a twitch. 

"Agreed." 

-- 

Ibiki was a bastard. 

Iruka glared at the man as he sat down behind the desk in the mission room. The bastard probably considered it fair payback for his broken nose. Iruka didn't care; he was pissed with the new arrangements. He'd liked selecting Genin teams in the comfort of an office, surrounded by scrolls and away from mentally unstable shinobi that just made his work harder. But now he had to _deal_ with them and approve their mission reports. Ibiki had said that it was because of Iruka's notably high intelligence clearing and the fact he wouldn't get intimidated by Jounin. Iruka knew it was because Ibiki was a sadistic bastard that extracted perverse pleasure from the knowledge he was making others suffer. 

Iruka blinked in bewilderment when a _napkin_ was dropped in front of him, crumpled, stained with god knew what and filled with an unintelligible scrawl. He looked up at the Jounin who was glaring challengingly at him, waiting for it to be approved. The teacher's eyes narrowed. 

"What _the hell_ is this supposed to be?" He picked up the 'report' with thumb and forefinger, half expecting it to fall apart as he did. 

Oh, his _first_ report to approve and he was already feeling an ulcer growing. 

"Mission report," the Jounin replied with a considerable amount of condescending spite, glaring disdainfully at Iruka's Chuunin vest. 

Iruka's free hand opened the drawer at his side and rumbled a bit until he found his lighter and not taking his eyes off the man, set the ridiculous piece of paper on fire. 

"The fuck you're doing!" The man had the gall to look angry. "Fucking _shit_, the fact you've got a cock up your ass doesn't mean others have to pay for it, _fag_." 

News traveled fast in Konoha, it seemed, but it _was_ a ninja village, so it was to be expected. The vicious proclamation also caused silence to fall over the room as Iruka's face colored brightly. Raidou and Genma were at the very back of the line of Jounin waiting to hand in their reports, and they tensed visibly as a vein began to throb on the Chuunin's temple. 

"Well, you see," Iruka smiled, still flushed with fury and shaking from the strength of it, "I'd rather have a cock up my ass than a kunai down my throat," he suddenly let his deadly intent flood the room; it was so strong and vicious a few choked on it. "Which is what will happen if you do not go wash your hands, find a _clean_ piece of paper and write a proper report." The Jounin stared at him, shivering under the strength of Iruka's most potent glare. "_Now!_" He snapped, baring his teeth in warning. 

The man was gone in a puff, proverbial tail lodged well between his legs. 

A few of the present began edging away from the still glaring Chuunin, eyeing their own pathetic attempts and deciding that maybe they should take a few minutes to redo it according to the proper regulations. 

"Now," Iruka said brightly, smiling chirpily and leashing his annoyance to a dull throbbing, "who's next?" 

Ibiki, who had been standing outside the door and had heard the whole exchange, grinned a bit before he walked back to his office. 

_Heh._

-- 

"Oh, not _you_." 

Kakashi blinked in bewilderment as Iruka groaned, hanging his head in defeat. He looked tired, although it was barely seven. The last rays of the sun still colored the sky a cheerful orange that reminded the Jounin acutely of a certain Kyubi-brat. Kakashi frowned. He wasn't expecting that greeting at all; he was even on time! Well, five minutes after Iruka's shift was over, but considering he was usually late by the scope of three hours, five minutes was _nothing_. Still, Iruka glared at him. 

"I don't even get a 'hello' kiss?" The Copy Nin asked hopefully, looking at his lover with a mildly mocking voice. 

"Would you settle for a 'fuck you' punch?" The Chuunin groused darkly, starting to walk back home. 

"Kinky," Kakashi said as he fell into step with him easily, dodging the fist gracefully. "Seriously, Ichiraku's? My treat, since you look like shit." 

Iruka sighed at the mildly sympathetic look he was given. Through the mask, he could guess Kakashi's thin lips pursed in faint concern. 

"Oh, alright," he gave the Jounin a sideway look, "but only if you promise to _not_ leave any more… _gifts_ in my stuff. I'm still angry about that one." 

Kakashi shrugged, clearly not sorry at all. They walked perhaps three streets before Iruka turned and punched the Jounin, whose hands had migrated to his ass. The Copy Nin moaned pitifully as he rubbed his abused jaw. 

"In your _dreams_," Iruka said, brimming with rightful indignation. Kakashi thought he looked edible. "It's a school night." 

"You're no fun, Iruka," Kakashi pouted and reassumed their way to the ramen stand, "no fun at all." 


End file.
